Bar Harbor Tea Company

Trying to finish off this tin… and it’s a great time of year to do it… very seasonably appropriate cuppa!

Can anyone say “procrastination”?

This tea never tastes as good as it smells. But that’s ok. It smells flipping fantabulous awesomely amazing, so it’s only natural the taste falls a bit short.

Decent black tea base that doesn’t get bitter at the drop of a hat. Nice, natural blueberry flavour that isn’t sickly sweet nor watered down. This will never be a favorite of mine because I like milk in my blacks and this one doesn’t really mesh with milk. But still a solid blueberry tea, which seems to be a reaaaally hard thing to do * cough * DAVIDsTEA * cough *

Technically, it’s a good thing I’m not in love with this tea – they don’t ship to Canada. No broken heart like with the fabulous Arbor Teas :( Awww great, now I’m sad!

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I only have a teeny bit more left =( I’ll have to order more.. This tastes a lot better than other flavored green teas I’ve had. More memorable.

This is such a great grind tea, it makes me feel so peaceful =D Such a nice taste!

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So I bought this during my trip in Maine over the summer. It was pretty pricey for the amount I got, but it was my own little souvenir from the trip!

The tea leaves themselves smell predominantly of cinnamon, and stays strong even after brewing. Adding a splash of skim milk cooled the tea down enough to drink so here goes!

Interesting. The spice is the immediate flavor but the vanilla and almond are also pretty taste-able. It’s not a bad tea, but I wish it had more body to it. The spice of it is really good though. I picked this tea with the intention of having it help warm me up with a comfortable home-y feeling, and that definitely comes across.

I am a little underwhelmed though.

For some reason I was craving this tea this morning. And then I nearly over-steeped it. Need tea timer with a nicely annoying buzz/beep/whatever.

Backlogging

The bright yellow liquor has a delicate peach flavor, like the flavor of the flesh just under the skin, not the tarter, stronger flavor from next to the pit.

Back-logging from this morning.

So, I stopped at the Bar Harbor Tea Co shop on my way home from work last night (huzzah! I don’t have to pay shipping for this stuff! Na na na-na na. Ahem…) with the intent of picking up a Bodum travel tea press. I got the press but figured I’d pick up a new tea while I was there. I had smelled this one during my last visit (to pick up a new tin of the chocolate chai) and had been amazed at how much like the native blueberries this smelled. So I snagged a small tin.

Now for those of you who have not spent time in Maine or the Maritime provinces of Canada, there are two kinds of blueberries. Most of you are likely familiar with the big, plump, bursting-with-juice blueberries commonly found in the grocery store. Those are called highbush blueberries. What we have here in Maine is called the lowbush blueberry. The plants grow right down flush with the ground, no taller than 15" and usually more like 5"-10", and the leaves and berries are smaller than those of the highbush berries. But what Maine blueberries lack in size they greatly make up for in flavor. No highbush berry can compare to the sweet/tart/juicy fruits of the lowbush blueberry that grows wild in the acidic soil of the region. Yes, wild. While there are indeed fields where these berries grow and are harvested they grew there naturally, with no human hand to plant them, no field equipment to water them.

It is of course the flavor of the native, lowbush wild blueberry that is used in this tea. The bright, red-amber liquor is redolent with the aroma and flavor of these berries, even more strongly in the aftertaste. And I would love to know what variety of black tea was used as a base for this as the steeped leaves are quite colorful. Large, though broken, and green, but with red-brown veins and stems.

And writing this has made me want another cup of this tea!

On my way home from my new job I stopped by the Bar Harbor Tea Company shop (it’s just a few doors down from the gallery I’m working at) to pick up a new tin of this since I finished up the old tin a couple weeks ago just before they re-opened. This is what I used when I gave my son his first taste of tea. Yes, I gave caffeine to a three year old, no, he wasn’t bouncing off the walls afterward, yes, he absolutely loved it. And he still loves it, had some with me this morning.

As the description says, it’s not super chocolaty, but you can definitely taste the chocolate. It, and the black tea, is more of a back-up singer to the lovely duet of the cinnamon and cardamom. I also usually add cloves to this but decided to go without for the purposes of the review…I’ll definitely be adding them next time though. I need cloves in my chai.

It’s been a while since I’ve had a cup of this… but with the spring weather, sun in the sky, and recent obsession with blueberries… it seemed like a good idea. (and it was!)

I’m mixed with this tea. It’s very potent with the blueberry flavor (it’s very fresh tasting and not too sweet) but not enough of the tea aspect comes through. I think that a longer steep time is better for this one. The blueberry flavors stay but the tea flavors really shine when steeped longer.

Tasty, but the lychee flavor is not very strong.

Potent blueberry flavor, very drinkable.

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with sugar. yum!

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I first tried this tea when visiting Maine a few years ago. Now it’s one of my staples. It’s a nice taste of spring in the winter, and the perfect cuppa once the temperatures start rising.