The Story Behind Our Sugar & Spice
That’s our great grandmother Mary Alice, and we created our Sugar & Spice Loose Leaf Tea for her.
She was born in Chorlton Cum Hardy, a small suburb of Manchester. The year was 1901, in a time when children were to be seen and not heard, and all girls were expected to be, “Sugar and spice and everything nice.” But Mary Alice was made of a different mettle. She had a strong will and a mischievous streak that baffled her mild-mannered parents.
She had aa thick head of curly black hair that grew in ringlets like Shirley Temple’s. She had one stubborn lock that always seemed to find a way to pop out of her baby bonnet and hang down the middle of her forehead. She told us that as a child, her father, our Great Great Gran Kee, used to sing these words to her:
There was a little girl,
Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead
When she was good,
She was very, very good,
But when she was bad, she was horrid.
Yes, when she was bad, she was horrid.
It wasn’t until she became an adult that she realized this was a nursery rhyme based on a poem by William Wadsworth Longfellow, and not just a song her father had made up about her.
Mary Alice was good, and although she wasn’t horrid, she was strong and sometimes outspoken in a way that was seen as unusual at the time. This strength and sense of independence proved to be useful in her adult life. She lived through both World Wars, and even single handedly ran the family Butcher Shop while her husband fought overseas in World War II.
We specially crafted this blend with a base of naturally sweet black tea and sweet orange peel, which reminds us of her kindness and the tender moments we shared baking with her. Then we added cinnamon chips and flavoring that gives the tea a spicy kick, and speaks to her strength and those fun moments of mischief when she would do silly things to make us laugh.
The end result is our Sugar & Spice, an homage to our beloved Great Grandmother, the little English girl who was always ahead of her time.
