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As a kid, Claire Bitner remembers going to visit her family in Wales, where her grandmother always kept the kettle on and drank tea all day long. “She used to say she’s having a cuppa,” Bitner says. “That was just her thing.”
Bitner developed a taste for tea herself, and later a tea business, 6 & 12 Tea Co. Formed a year and a half ago by Bitner, her husband, Tony, and their friends Tom and Gabrielle Koren and Trish and Manny Figueroa, the company had its official debut at a launch party Dec. 5.
“Our main idea is to make 6 & 12 accessible to everyone, not just a product for people who consider themselves tea drinkers,” Bitner says. “A lot of tea lines are branded as only for people who are really health conscious, or something you drink when you’re sick, but I think that’s an American concept. In most of the world, tea is just as much an everyday drink as coffee is.”
The name 6 & 12 refers to the “proper” way to stir a cup of tea, according to British etiquette. “If you’re staring down at the top of a tea cup, think of a clock,” Bitner says. “Put the spoon in at 6 o’clock and stir it up to 12 o’clock. Do that two times.”
Tony Bitner, Manny Figueroa and Tom Koren are behind Rusty Dog Coffee, a small-batch roaster that launched in 2017. Claire Bitner says the tea line developed independently, but the experience from the coffee business helped them in sourcing the teas.
She and her business partners spent more than a year testing teas from around the world and creating the blends for 6 & 12, eventually narrowing the product line to 10 varieties. There’s an herbal blend with lemon, ginger and mint; a green tea blend with jasmine, English breakfast and masala chai. Bitner is particularly excited about 6 & 12’s matcha, a stone-ground tea sourced from Japan. All tea is organically grown, ethically sourced and free of artificial flavorings or added sweeteners.
“It was really fun deciding what to pick,” she says. “I really think we’ve sourced the best tea available anywhere.”
The product line is sold online at 6and12tea.com and is available locally at Valentia Coffee, a new cafe that opened this year in the former Coffee Bytes space at 799 University Ave. Bitner hopes to be in local grocery stores within the next few months.
