Teas, Tisanes & Cordials

There is a particular kind of magic that happens when you carry a handful of fresh-cut herbs across a garden path still damp with morning dew, set the kettle on the hob, and wait for steam to rise — and I have been under that spell for more years than I care to count. This little book was born not in any grand kitchen or professional stillroom, but at my own scrubbed oak table, surrounded by bundles of drying lavender, jam jars of elderflower cordial catching the afternoon light, and notebooks filled with the sort of scrawled, blotted recipes that are honestly the most trustworthy kind. What I have gathered here are the drinks of a quiet life well lived — tisanes steeped through long winters, cordials pressed in the full blowsy heart of summer, warming possets carried upstairs to someone who needed comfort, and cool infusions sipped in the garden on evenings when the roses smelled almost unbearably sweet. None of it is complicated, and that is very much the point. The garden gives generously, the kettle obliges, and in the simple act of brewing something fragrant and good from the plants growing just beyond your door, you will find — as I have always found — that a great deal of the world's trouble can be, if not entirely solved, then at least very considerably soothed.

There is a drink for every moment in my day: a bright mint tisane to wake me, a chamomile brew to settle the evening, an elderflower cordial to catch the summer, a spiced apple to warm the winter. Each is a small ceremony — a pause, a comfort, a moment of care in a hurried world. Here I share all my favourites, gathered over decades, so that you too may always have something soothing to reach for, whatever the hour or the weather.

— Agnes