A Tasteful Exchange!

Want to make everything that you eat taste better?

So does The Spice and Tea Exchange. What better way is there to accomplish that than to smell it first? You won’t know how a spice or tea will taste until you smell it. And no, that’s not a typo. “Our sense of smell is what determines 97% of what we taste,” says Bill Files, co-owner with his wife Linda of The Spice and Tea Exchange. “That’s why we encourage our customers to come in to have a look—and a smell—around our store.”

It’s excellent advice. The Spice and Tea Exchange offers more than 85 custom spice blends custom prepared in-store daily. Plus, 75 varieties of loose-leaf tea. They import them all; spices, herbs, sugars, salts, meat rubs, seafood seasonings, and teas, from countries all over the world. They’re super fresh and the store maintains that freshness by constantly rotating their stock.

“We sell six different paprikas,” Bill says, “including sweet, hot, and smoked. We have five different cinnamons sourced from their countries of origin. Vietnam aka Saigon cinnamon and True Ceylon cinnamon that has a richer, subtler flavor. Try them. Smell them. You’ll see why we offer so many choices.”

Freshness is the key with both spices and teas and it can make all the difference in the flavors of what you eat and drink. That’s especially critical with spices. “I’ll bet most everyone who reads this has spices in their cupboards that are years out of date. Even the products on grocery store spice aisles aren’t all that fresh. Why? Because they’ve been processed and packaged for maximum profit, often with additives and extenders to increase their volume. They sit around for who knows how long before they’re shipped to distribution centers. Then, they’re loaded onto trucks and delivered, waiting to make it onto a shelf. Ours come to us in bulk and go straight to you.”

Color and smell are great ways to judge freshness. Fresh parsley is bright green. Fresh curry, cardamom, and garlic smell exquisitely strong. “We had a chef come in our Winter Park store,” Bill says. “He said, Wow look at your parsley—we get ours from a food distributor and it’s brown. Yours is like a green lawn!”

Now, you want to enjoy a better cup of tea? Here are a few tips:

Always buy loose tea. It’s far superior than tea bags. Those bags contain the stems, dregs, and dust that fall to the bottom of producers’ drying racks.

Time, temperature, and amount are critical. Brew your tea according to its particular directions. Want it stronger? Don’t steep it longer. Use more tea. Steeping longer only makes it bitter. Whatever infuser you use—The Spice and Tea Exchange have them in-store—allow room in it for tea to expand. Don’t overfill it.

Want to cook like a gourmet —even if you can’t cook?

Use the brilliantly fresh spices from The Spice and Tea Exchange. Their enhanced flavors will simply improve the taste of everything you cook. Isn’t that the point? Everyone likes to eat. You and the ones you cook for will like your food even more when it has more flavor. So, take your taste buds to school and visit The Spice and Tea Exchange—right across from the yellow caboose in Winter Garden.