Sonoma entrepreneur launches Uppercase Tea

Sonoma, you are probably drinking your tea wrong.

“You need the right ratio of tea leaves to water, the right temperature, and you need to steep it for the right amount of time,” says Sonoma tea mogul Alison Kilmer. “And all that varies based on what kind of tea it is.”

A few years ago, Kilmer went on a cleanse and gave up coffee and started drinking tea.

“I felt amazing,” she said. “I started looking for quality teas and I couldn’t really find them on the market.”

She started looking into the powerful history of women and tea and found that as women fought for the right to vote and to own property, they couldn’t gather in public so that they would gather in each other’s homes and have tea.

“And when those gatherings happened, amazing things would happen as a result,” she said. “Wherever there’s been this shift in history for women, tea has always been there.”

That’s what inspired Kilmer to, as she says, use “tea as a vehicle to empower women and to give back to women’s organizations.” She also hopes to encourage more social gatherings. “I believe that when we gather together, women can achieve remarkable things,” she says.

America hasn’t embraced tea as other cultures have, says Kilmer.

“It’s a shame because it’s a really good time to think and take time for oneself, especially women who are always taking care of everyone else,” says Kilmer.

To her, the ceremony is “not only taking the time to do something proper, but it’s also taking the time to enjoy beauty.”

Before moving to Sonoma in 2011, Kilmer spent more than a dozen years running a San Francisco branding company that specialized in companies focused on social good.

“But I found that I really wanted to create my own product line that could also be a social venture,” she said. She and her husband, who is also her business partner, “have always had this bug to create something of our own.” And what came to a boil is Uppercase Tea.

Kilmer is using Uppercase Tea as a vehicle to raise funds and awareness for women’s causes, and to also bring back that powerful tradition of women gathering over tea.

Kilmer’s giving arm, the Sisterhood of Tea, donates 15 percent of the profits from Uppercase Tea to women’s causes, including Sonoma Valley Teen Services, the Wine Women nonprofit and the Sonoma Valley Woman’s Club.

“Women have so much to offer our communities,” said Kilmer. “We are the matriarchs. We get stuff done, we do it with compassion and with empathy and with an open mind. I want to use tea to bring some civility back so that we can have constructive, thoughtful debates and conversations.”

Kilmer is drawn to the ceremony surrounding tea, and Uppercase tea’s tagline is: “refreshingly civilized.”

Kilmer and her husband (whose title is the Steeper) brew the teas in micro-batches in Teen Services’ commercial kitchen on Highway 12. Kilmer has hired Sonoma Valley High School students Brissa Gonzalez and Olivia Thorgeson to help her measure and package Uppercase Tea’s single-estate loose-leaf organic teas.

“I love hanging out with them,” she said. “It gives me the opportunity to mentor them, to talk to them about entrepreneurialism.”

Uppercase Tea first launched with Rooibos, a super tea out of South Africa.

“It’s chock full of antioxidants, naturally caffeine free, unsweetened and it has this most amazing flavor of vanilla and honey,” said Kilmer.

The lines of teas now also include white, green, black, Oolong and Pu’erh teas.

Kilmer said that the more she learned about tea and how it’s produced, the more important it became for her to create a “clean” tea.

“There’s a lot of really bad tea out there – full of pesticides and GMOs and fertilizers. You’re drinking the water that is pulling those things out of the tea. You really want to make sure you drink in pure tea.” Last year, she reworked the entire line of teas to become all organic.

This fall, Kilmer introduced a line of iced teas. Her bottled Uppercase Teas are sold in 10-ounce single servings and larger 45-ounce bottles through retail channels where, she says, they have been well-received. Locally, they can be found at Frenchie, the Panel, Sweet Scoops, Les Pascals and Fat Pilgrim.

“We would love to see the larger bottles offered at restaurants like EDK, served in a wine glass over ice with maybe a sprig of lavender,” Kilmer said. “We’re trying to elevate the experience of drinking tea and to provide a superior experience for tea drinkers.”

Kilmer has tested hundreds of types of tea and developed guidelines for the best, easiest, simple way for women to brew a really proper, delicious loose leaf tea.

And she introduced the “Me-Pot.”

The Me-Pot is a dishwasher safe glass tea pot designed for one. Her teas come with instructions for the right temperature of water and steep time. She even developed an app with a stopwatch for the perfect steep time for each tea.

“We created a vessel for this which we think is timeless,” she said. “That merges a sort of English refinement with the convenience that modern women require.”

After the tea has steeped, you pour it into a perfectly-measured, delicate and yet commercial-grade tea cup, that Kilmer also designed, made of crushed seashells. Making a face, Kilmer pointed out that the more common bone china is actually made from beef bone ash.

Both her loose leaf tea and the tea bags are sold online by single purchase or by subscription, and the first order arrives in a keepsake box.

Kilmer sees a lot of parallels between the way that tea is valued in the world and the way that wine is valued.

“How it’s grown, where it’s grown, the climate, the terroir… how it’s aged and fermented, how it’s produced, all of those things,” she said. “All these elements play into the quality of really well made tea.”

Kilmer is thrilled to be building her business in Sonoma.

“We have such a rich, powerful, amazing food and beverage scene here. Tea needs to be part of that because more people are seeking alternatives to alcohol,” she said. “When we pour our teas at events with side by side with wine, a lot of people just want the tea because you can’t drink wine all day.”

Her goal is to see her products being served all over the county. Uppercase Tea is now available at select hotels like the Cottage Inn and Spa, and she is in conversation with Oliver’s and Nugget stores for broader distribution.

“When it comes to tea in Sonoma County, the bar is really low and it’s sad,” she said. “I’d love to see tea elevated to the same level as wine in bars, restaurants, retail outlets, hotels and specialty grocers.”

Email Lorna at lorna.sheridan@sonomanews.com.