My Cup of Tea

Perhaps Ceremonie’s most famous — and innovative — offering is its “mini-cube” a silk mesh sachet of tea individually packed in tiny cube-shaped boxes decorated with Ceremonie’s distinctive design (Photo: Lior Mizrachi)

T he Migdal HaEmek headquarters of Ceremonie Tea is very far both geographically and aesthetically from the picturesque tea plantations of the Far East. Instead the company is located in a rather uninspiring warehouse in an industrial park in the Jezreel Valley.

But as soon as you walk in the door you may as well be in the tea fields of India or China. From every direction sacks of aromatic teas attack the senses with the whispers of bergamot sage nutmeg and cardamom — the fragrances of history comfort and tradition.

For the past four years ever since Elli and Efrat Schorr took over the Ceremonie Tea company they have Efrat admits lived eaten and dreamed (and presumably drunk) tea tea tea. Yet they both came from a life very far from the world of tea trading. The Schorrs both grew up in observant Zionist homes in Silver Spring Maryland. They were even classmates in the same grade — in the same Jewish day school.