Pittsburgh Tea Shop

Ep. 42 Communi-tea & collaboration, Danielle Spinola/Tupelo Honey Teas

In addition to collaborating with local breweries, Danielle is foraging & blending teas to support the preservation of Girty's Woods

by Stephanie Brea | August 25, 2020

Danielle Spinola/Tupelo Honey Teas

Danielle Spinola has been serving her specialty tea blends to Pittsburghers since 2007. In 2016, she expanded Tupelo Honey Teas and opened a plant-based cafe in Millvale, returning to her hometown and working to build community with an emphasis on sustainability and collaboration. In this episode, she gives an excellent tea explainer and discusses the health benefits of the beverage. We learn her views about plants as medicine and the level of care she and her team take when blending and selling tea to customers. Is tea, well, not your cup of tea? Spinola takes a “thinking outside the box” approach to tea and her business, which means that her blends are often used in collaborations with local breweries and distilleries for some harder-edged drinks. The episode concludes with her latest collaboration project: She is foraging in Girty’s Woods each week to create a tea used to raise money for the Allegheny Land Trust’s purchase of the 155 acres that span Millvale, Shaler, and Reserve in order to preserve it as green space. Spinola’s contribution is just one part of the initiative; additional upcoming fundraisers include a pasta dinner at Sprezzatura on Sept. 19.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CAybrFOj8JC/

To connect with Tupelo Honey Teas

https://www.instagram.com/p/CCTkqPEjb9W/

C is for cookie

What goes great with tea? Cookies. This week, we dug through our archives to find a previously unreleased clip. Very Local freelancer/cookie enthusiast Boaz Frankel recommends his favorite chocolate chip cookies around town.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CC8eXUtDCfw/

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This episode was hosted by Aadam Soorma, recorded remotely, engineered and edited by Epicast Studios.

📸 Header photo: Asanté Bierria

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Stephanie Brea

Stephanie Brea

Stephanie has been organizing events since 1998, starting with a series of motorcycle rides through the Arizona desert to support her father’s business. She’s probably crossed your name off a presale ticket list or served you a beer somewhere around town.

An undergrad degree in poetry means she has lots of unpractical knowledge about iambic pentameter, while a brief stint as a copy editor for Alternative Press taught her that twenty one pilots is stylized in all lowercase letters.

Wanna throw a party in a vacant parking lot? She’s interested.

At the onset of COVID-19, Stephanie took on the role of podcast producer for The Slaw. She’s pretty familiar with a microphone, thanks to that aforementioned poetry degree, and she’s got the wherewithal to ask Epicast Studios for help. She listens to too many true crime podcasts, and currently records from her bedroom.

If you know of someone who would be the perfect podcast guest, send her an email.

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Download the Very Local app to stream all of the Very Local original series for FREE!