Gelateria Naia is proud to host the Gelateria Naia Pre-Release Gelato Tasting.

Sample twenty-two (22!) never-before released gelato flavors created in conjunction with the founders at Numi Tea of Oakland, Blue Bottle Coffee of Oakland, Recchiuti Chocolates of San Francisco, TCHO Chocolate of San Francisco and St George Spirits / Hangar One of Alameda. From 6:00pm to 9:00pm on Thursday, February 4th, you will be able to sample as much as you like from a wide array of gelato made from the finest local ingredients available.

Some of the flavors include a sneak preview of: Numi Tea Aged Earl Gray, TCHO Chocolate Nutty, Blue Bottle Coffee Sidamo, St. George Spirits Absinthe, TCHO Chocolate Citrus, Numi Tea Rooibos Red Mellow Bush, and Blue Bottle Coffee Bella Donovan.

Several of our friends from these local artisans will be on hand to discuss or sample their products as well.

Proceeds from the event will go to Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) to aid the relief effort in Haiti.

*tickets need to be purchased in advanced*

Tickets are only available at brownpapertickets.com.

Sometimes making a new flavor can be an unexpected challenge. As we toured the Numi Tea warehouse with owner Ahmed Rahim, it was obvious he and his company are obsessed with tea. It was also obvious that there is a huge variety of teas, teasans, flowering teas, puerhs, herbal teas and on and on. Chris and I left the meeting excited and loaded down with two giant boxes of tea samples.

The reality of what we needed to do next sank in when we laid it all out in our gelato kitchen. We had nearly two dozen different tea varieties that needed to be made into gelato. That’s a lot of work so Chris and I came up with a plan, ask Todd do it.

We brought 18 samples of tea gelato back for the entire Numi office for a tasting. We were rewarded with huge smiles and kind words. They complimented our fine gelato and we praised their high quality tea. In a few weeks you will be able to enjoy several flavors of tea gelato made with tea sourced from Numi, another great Bay Area company.

We are always working on new flavors. Always. There are a number of things that inspire us to create a new gelato flavor but the best inspiration comes from meeting people. Here in the Bay Area we are spoiled with an abundance of fellow food artisans.

Last week we met James Freeman at his beautiful new Blue Bottle roasting facility in Oakland. We explained how we make gelato and he talked about different ways they roast and brew coffee. Then we enjoyed a cupping of several single origin beans. Then James said, “Where’s the gelato?” He gathered some people and we enjoyed another kind of cupping.

From that one conversation we developed a whole new way to make coffee gelato, we call it the cold press method. Our Blue Bottle Coffee Gelato will be in stores soon.

As the weather turns gray and damp it’s a great time of the year in our showcases. Our Winter Holiday flavors are out and selling well. This year we are featuring:

Gingerbread
Egg Nog
Marsala Raisin
Snowflake
Irish Cream
Peppermint Bark

The Irish Cream gelato is inspired by Rick’s family tradition of making Irish Cream in the days leading up to Christmas and uses their family recipe. Peppermint Bark is inspired by my wife’s annual Christmas treat. Each year she makes a big batch of Peppermint Bark for co-workers, friends and relatives.

Don’t show up empty-handed at Thanksgiving dinner. Or the Holiday party. Or the work potluck. Instead, come by and pickup a gelato pumpkin pie.

Bring one of our gelato pumpkin pies made with an all-natural crust and our hand-crafted pumpkin gelato and you will be praised for your thoughtfulness, admired for your cleverness and toasted for you sense of grace. Your name will be remembered next year and years to come and surely, more invitations will arrive at your door as a result.

But do keep in mind, our gelato pumpkin pies are only available through Christmas.

As soon as September rolls around I start getting excited. Not about September itself, but that September gives way to October. And October means Fall flavors of gelato. We generally come up with more flavors than we can actually make. This year we had to strike a few flavors that we made last year to allow room for even more new flavors.

This year we have Apple Crisp, Apple Cider, and Pecan added to our daily todo list along with previous year’s favorites like Pumpkin, Butternut Squash, Maple and Guavasteen. We will carry these flavors through the end of November. And you know what the end of November means. right? December’s Christmas flavors are right around the corner.

We got in touch with a local rare fruit growers association a few years ago and talked about how we make our fresh fruit sorbetto. We got an enthusiastic response from Mr and Mrs Grossman of Berkeley about their Feijoa tree.

In past years they had sold the fruit to Berkeley Bowl but the Grossmans didn’t notice the fruit selling well and they worried that people didn’t know what to do with it after they bought it. Rather than sell the fruit to Berkeley Bowl, they sold it to us. For the past four years we have bought all of the fruit and turned it into a delicious sorbetto sourced just a few miles from our kitchen.

So what is a Feijoa? You may know it as a pineapple guava or a guavasteen. Or you may not. It is a rare fruit after all. The taste is very sour but when we make it into a sorbetto it turns into a very unique and refreshing flavor, one that makes you wonder why it is such a rare fruit.