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Monk's Blend from Granville Island Tea Co

Steepster Score 2 Ratings Rate This Tea

72/100

Monk's Blend

Black Tea by Granville Island Tea Co

An OP (orange pekoe) grade of tea, harvested from the high regions of Ceylon and blended with natural pomegranate and vanilla bean flavor.

5 Tasting Notes

Jillian
70
Jillian 3 tasting notes

My only other experience with Monk’s Blend is from a rather unfortunate (and yucky) teabag so I wanted to see how the real blend tasted. The tea was slightly sweet-smelling but not heavily so, scented with vanilla and fruity notes (from the grenadine I’m assuming).

The flavours are not terribly bold and I get the impression that the tea base is supposed to take centre stage and that the flavouring is more a compliment than anything else, as opposed to an actual flavoured tea where you mostly get the flavouring rather than the tea.

The result in this case is a mild, smooth-tasting tea with little astringency and enhanced with notes of sweet pomegranate (some people have said that grenadine tastes more like cherry, but this one at least is distinctly pomegranate to me) and hints of vanilla. Not bad.

It goes decently enough with milk, as it helps take offthat astringent black tea edge. But it also kills a lot of the fruity grenadine flavour, unfortunately. This tea might be better drunk plain with a bit of sweetener, maybe. I’ll see about trying it that way next time.

My boyfriend came across this cool recipe for tea-infused creme brulée – it actually called for earl grey tea but I couldn’t find any of that variety (I’m sure I’ve got some somewhere, it’s just buried in the depths of my cupboard) so we decided to use this tea instead. The result was quite delicious with the creme brulée bringing out the sweet grenadine flavours and mellowing out the tannins in the tea. Yummy!

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Cavocorax
56
Cavocorax 2 tasting notes

This was given to me by a friend who wanted more out of this tea, and was hoping I might enjoy it more. So far, so good.

The black tea provides a nice base, while the vanilla and pomegranate are hints that sweeten it up. I don’t know that I would replace it when I run out, but I am enjoying it.

I feel mean rating it this low, but based on the smilies in the scale, this is where it belongs.

I pulled this out of my black tea box, steeped it, and by the time I had returned it to the tin, had forgotten what I had made. It was a fun game to figure it out.

It seems that the pomegranates are more prominent this time around, but the black base is slightly astringent. The sweet and bitter combination is interesting and will get me through the cup, but I’ll probably switch to something else instead of resteeping.

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