Smelled this at the market today and fell madly in love. The wine smell is so authentic that when I gave it to the beau (without telling him what it was) his first guess was wine. I don’t know that I get pear or berries, but I do get a deliciously sweet fruity wine scent. I’ve unfortunately not yet had an ice wine so I can’t speak to it’s authenticity on that front, but it definitely smells like a wine.
The Tea Brewery (unfrotunately) doesn’t list any information about their teas or steeping parameters on their website or the packaging. Accordingly, I made it up. It looks and acts like a black tea, so we boiled the water. I gave mine about 3 minutes of steeping, and the beau kept his closer to five. The liquor is rich and dark, a deep wine red in the pot and a reddish amber in my mug. The smell is similar to that of the dry leaves: fruit, wine. Delicious!
First sips match the smell wonderfully. No bitterness, no tea taste at all, in fact. It’s like drinking wine, only without the alcohol tinge. This really captures some of my favourite aspects of sweeter wines…Unsurprisingly, I love wine. I have no real taste for it though, and happily drink the $10 bottles from the NSLC. For times when I oughtn’t “drink” (aka during the work day!), this tea will be a lovely source of comfort…Wonder if I could succesfully drink it from a wine glass?
As the cup cools I start to get shadows of the tea taste, but that is not a problem. It is a wonderful merging of wine and tea…a real treat on this rainy evening.
