Lavender Flower Tea.

The last cup of the evening, the lamps low, and the room smelling of lavender before you even taste it. These tiny violet buds are still faintly sticky with their own oil, and a single spoonful perfumes the whole cupboard. Steeped, they turn the water a pale straw-violet and release a floral, faintly camphorous scent.

Lavender has been strewn on floors, sewn into pillows and steeped into tisanes across European herbal tradition for centuries, long valued as a calming flower for the close of the day. These buds are the culinary variety, Lavandula angustifolia or English lavender, chosen over the sharper hybrids for its rounder, sweeter oil and grown for the cup rather than the drawer, so they taste sweeter and less soapy than sachet lavender. They come from a single farm in Provence, hand-cut at the peak of bloom and dried on screens rather than in a forced-air oven, which keeps more of the essential oil intact.

How to use

Steep a teaspoon in water just off the boil for five minutes, covered, so the oils do not escape with the steam. It is strong on its own and gentler with a spoonful of chamomile or a curl of lemon peel. It contains no caffeine.

Pour the last cup of the evening, and let the day close softly.