Granville Island Tea Co

Yesterday I was running around like a chicken with it’s head cut off, so I didn’t get a chance to sit down and really have a cup of tea, apart from the cold brewed tea at lunch. It felt so wrong! I mean, I’m used to not having tea on the weekends, especially in the summer, because I don’t do a lot of tea drinking at home, but at work I almost always have my morning and afternoon teas, and I had neither!

Anyway, today should be a bit better. This tea smells lemony and citrusy and bright, and should definitely help perk me up this morning. This cup doesn’t have the very slight bitterness that the first one had. The black tea base is very smooth this morning, with the bright lemongrass and citrus popping through and almost making my tongue tingle.

I really am kind of compulsive about trying all the new teas I haven’t tried yet before going back to the rest of my cupboard. I’ll occasionally return for something specific (see: yesterday’s jasmine tea), but not too frequently. Thanks to Jillian for sending me another Earl Grey to try! I love a nice traditional EG, but I also tend to really enjoy EGs with extras like lemongrass and other citrus in them.

Brewed up, this one smells citrusy and lemongrassy. These notes give the flavor an extremely bright edge; you can rarely hide lemongrass in a blend, and that’s the case here. Fortunately I like lemongrass! But if you don’t this isn’t the tea for you. The bergamot in this is still a featured flavor, but everything else added means that it’s very citrusy and fruity. There’s a faint hint of astringency and bitterness, but not enough to bother me for this cup. All in all, a nice “alternative” Earl Grey and one I might consider keeping around for those times when I really want a lemony, citrusy Earl Grey.

This is an interesting take on the traditional earl grey tea. The orange and lemon flavours give the tea a tangy zip without the added pungency of bergamot. It goes surprisingly well with milk – though the result is a bit lighter than the traditional cuppa of earl grey in my opinion. It’s a nice tea to drink on a gorgeous, sunny morning like this one. _

The owner of the Granville Island Tea Co. told me that this is one of their most popular blends, though I do wonder if that has partially to do with the fact that Granville Island is a popular tourist destination and ice wine is becoming known as a rather Canadian sort of thing – like maple syrup.

I found the smell of this tea to be richly sweet and quite fruity\grapey. It doesn’t smell fermented or yeasty like actual wine might, which I’m thankful for as I think that would be rather off-putting. The flavour is quite strong and authentic as if I’d actually mixed ice wine with the black tea in my cup. The flavour is very wine-like but sweeter and with a hint of something a bit floral on the aftertaste.

I really enjoyed this blend; maybe next time I’m in Vancouver I’ll buy a full pouch rather than the little sample of it got on my last visit.

This isn’t a tea I’d normally try with milk as it doesn’t mix with a lot of berry-flavoured teas. But it worked surprisingly nicely with this one – perhaps because of the lemon flavours?

This is a pretty classic black tea blend and the Granville Island Tea Co does it quite well. The tea is a bit on the astringent side, which actually ends up working with the lemon and strawberry flavours by bringing out the fruitiness. Milk or any sort of dairy would be a big no-no for this tea I think, although a bit of honey might work fine. It’s a light, summer-y sort of tea that brings to mind fancy afternoon tea parties out in the garden on a nice day. It would probably make a good iced brew for this reason as well.

I think this tea’s finally grown on me. A shame because this is the last cup I’ve got left. I feel my taste for wine grew with this, despite the fact I didn’t actually DRINK any wine. The base is mild, the "soapy"ness of my original post has evolved into a sweet muscatel grape. Reminds me a little more of white grapes (never liked the purple—I think because of growing up on the artificial purple grape taste).

Bumping up the rank just a bit. That’s the last of this.

Trying this again—five minute steep now, instead of four. It’s really… blech. Maybe I just don’t like wine flavours. But it honestly makes me think of soap. Grapy soap. There’s really no trace of the base in it—it’s weird. Still, I’m sipping it a lot in hopes that maybe the taste will grow on me. At the very least, I’m not spitting it out. And occasionally it does remind me of wine. More the smell, though. Well, I’ve got a good fifty grams of this to experiment with. Although it doesn’t seem like there’s much I can do. Certainly unique.

Edit: An aftertaste is developing and coating my mouth, I’ve noticed—and it’s definitely more grape-y and wine-y. I’m very on the fence about this one.

I’ve been on the lookout for a good ice wine tea. Seems only proper as a Canadian. I’ve already got maple.

I had a Baroness Grey while I was there, but wasn’t too pleased with it. Picked up fifty grams of this and their House blend as I left.

It’s very mild. The tea, I mean—it’s oddly tasteless. Difficult to describe—I’m not getting a hot water taste. Almost kind of soapy. Which probably isn’t good. The notes of wine are there in the smell (sans alcohol, which is normally all I can smell or taste whenever I try to consume liquor), and there are sweet notes as I sip. Very odd.

Mellow, though. Reminds me of chamomile, even though this is SUPPOSED to be black tea.

Edit: Tea’s gone cold now, and it’s a soapy but grapy taste. Huh.

Backlog: This was a real disappointment to drink. Gaiwan brewing. Perhaps next time I’ll try something different. More details will be forthcoming then.

Dry, the smell of the tea is really dominated by orange – in fact, I couldn’t pick up any chocolate at all. Steeped, the smell is much mellower, and the chocolate is just present enough to smooth things out while the orange sweetens things up.

The taste is lovely and light, and the chocolate and orange work well together to make a sweet, smooth flavour. I’m wondering if I should try steeping it a bit longer, though – the taste is a bit too light and gets a bit lost in the agave syrup I added.

I used one and a half scoops (with one of those perfect cup of tea scoops), and steeped it for only two and a half minutes. The flavour came out much nicer, so I’m bumping the rating up.

Dry, the tea has a very, very strong vanilla scent. Once steeped, however, the vanilla is toned down and the other scents peek through. The scent is not particularly vanilla-y or hazelnut-y, though – it’s more milky.

The taste is smooth and pleasant – again, not really vanilla or hazelnut in particular, just smooth and nice, with some vanilla and hazelnut more in the back of the mouth.

Reducing the steeping time really helped get rid of some of that tree-bark taste this tea had. Now it’s more of a bakey flavour with some lightly spicy notes.

The second steep (@ 3:00) is light and sweet with notes of mild honey and fruit. The bakeiness is still there, faintly, mostly in the aftertaste.

I’m upping my rating of this tea – as it turns out the parameters just needed some tweaking.

I’m leaning towards liking the resteep (@4 min) of this tea more than the initial steep – it still has a bakiness to it but it’s much sweeter and it has sort of apricot or peach-like notes that come out – ‘stone fruit’ notes I think I’ve heard some people describe the taste.

By the third resteep (@5 min) I am noticing the flavour starting to taper off, however.

So continues my quest for the perfect dark formosa oolong. The dry tea has a spicy-ish smell to it. Brewed it has quite a pungent, almost woodsy sort of taste with a strong bakey flavour accompanying it. I noticed that it took on some fruity notes and taste a little bit sweeter as it cooled off.

The second steep (@3:30) has a sweeter, more developed fruity flavour and it tasted less bakey than the first round.

I first had Early Grey with cardamom at a friend’s house. I thought it was divine but I hadn’t been able to find something similar for years. Finally I found it.

The tea smells very pungent. It put me off at first. Steeped by itself, it’s not really that great. However, it’s delicious when you add milk and sugar to it. Very smooth and aromatic (but not overpowering). Ultimate “roundness” in my mouth which I really enjoy :)

Steeped at 205 degree F.

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!

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 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.

I got this tea from Jillian and decided to steep it in my Sorapot.

[It was very pretty – I’ll need to take pictures next time.]

First off, one of the things that I absolutely love is the short steep time, because it means that I don’t have to wait that long in between cups. I got a pretty good rhythm going, lengthening the steep time by maybe 15 seconds or so on each subsequent cup, stopping at four. I could have gone longer, I suspect, because the flavor wasn’t weakening for me – a very good sign.

This tea was buttery, with some sweetness that sashayed around and swished through the aftertaste. At times, it had a very pronounced vegetal quality to it, which is something that I’m somewhat indifferent on. For me, it didn’t stick around consistently, and I consider that to be a saving quality. It had a darkness that colored the flavor of the tea, which keeps me from wanting to compare this to a Formosan Oolong since it had some similar qualities.

Overall, I found it wholly enjoyable, so thanks for sending this to me, Jillian! I look forward to many steeps in my future.

Finished up what was left in my stash…doubly strong…still good!

This hits the spot this morning! YUM! Nice even taste.