Canadian Ice Wine Tea

This morning, I took the simple approach and reached for a black tea in a tea bag as I have an early morning (well, early for me, anyways) appointment. This is my very last of this tea that I received in a swap.

This is not my favorite Metropolitan Tea, and as a tea purveyor I’ve been fortunate to have the opportunity to taste quite a bit from them. But I do like this tea, don’t get me wrong. I’m just not a big fan of grape flavor, which seems to also apply to wine-flavored teas such as this one. Not that I dislike it, let’s just say that I generally pass up the grape flavored skittles in favor of the other flavors.

Anyways… this is a good tea, and a very intriguing flavor. It does have a wine-like quality to it which always seems to cause me to do a double take. You’d think by now I’d get used to it, as I’ve tried quite a few “wine” infused teas, but, that fermented taste is always just a little surprising – in a good way – to me.

It is a weird tea to drink in the morning though, it’s much better suited for meal-time or in the afternoon, in my opinion. However, this was the first black tea I grabbed, so I went with it. A pleasant tea experience, overall.

I like my iced wines to be a bit sweeter and stronger. However if you don’t then you may like this one. No astringency, no bitterness, there is that sparky feeling in the mouth like other ice wines I have had. Just not quite enough of a punch for me :)
Thank you Indigobloom for ANOTHER sample! :)

Whoops, had a little confusion issue about which tea I was reviewing. Probably caught it quickly enough for nobody to notice though :D

Anyways, this is round 2 of ice wine tea tasting, courtesy of Indigobloom!

Dry, this one smelled a little off, like fermenting grapes. I think 52teas Sweet Merlot had a similar aroma. However, that’s kind of what wine/a winery smell like!

Steeped, this one’s very dark, in spite of the 2 minute infusion I gave it! The aroma is a bit of black tea, with some sweetness and a bit of that fermenty grape flavour. I think I’m making a mental association to purple Kool-aid flavoured homemade playdough…

Ooh! Different. Thanks for the warning Indigobloom, this one definitely brews up strong! There’s astringency but it stops just short of bitterness thankfully. I think I would have been happier with only a minute-long infusion though. The flavour is hard to get at for me, because of the astringency. It’s a bit sweet, and perhaps a bit grapey/winey. Definitely a lot heavier than the Culinary Teas version. I think I prefer the Culinary Teas one over this though, as I think there’s more flavour.

Neither of these teas really did it for me though, to be honest. Interesting to try them though! Thanks again for the sample, Indigobloom!

Received a few teabags of this from a swap with French Vanilla. I love the aroma the dry leaf produces (dry bag of leaves produces). It is grape-y, sweet and full of black tea scent.

This tastes like a lighter less astringent black tea sweetened with sweet red grapes and cheap sweet wine. I suppose it doesn’t have to be cheap wine, but it reminds me of the boones farm wine and tea. I wonder if this would make a good tea cocktail if one would use a tea concentrate with vodka or rum. Hmmm…I think I best stick to a satisfying tea. I’m glad I have the opportunity to try this tea.

So Friday we got paid and promptly returned to Say Tea and dropped a significant amount of money there. Oh well, most were Christmas gifts. Anyway, after the other two icewine teas I’ve tried, I had to get this one. Plus, the little wooden box is so cute! It was really tasty, juicy like the others with a slight tang that does remind me of wine. Yum. When it got cold, though, it was bitter and horrible, but that’s my fault. Overall, this was pretty dang good for a bagged tea!

An intriguing combo to be sure. I need to try this a few more times.

So I am impressed with this tea. It takes an interesting spin on flavored black teas. The unique tangy notes is quite similar to ice wine. Good times.

It tastes like white wine. ___ A winner.

I made a super weak brew of this tea last night because I wanted to get a taste for it before I made a stronger version of it. I really, really liked it. A great note of grapes and sweetness that really tasted delicious in the cold of night! I can’t wait to try a strong version of this.

This is the first time I have tried this brand and I will tell you that I will be trying more very soon as it is now available to me locally. I had this specific tea as a free sample of a gift shop that was having an autumn open house. It was delightful! The coloring is that of a reddish brown. The scent is powerful but not overwhelming. The taste is a black tea but with fruity undertones and a hint of an iced wine hint. Usually I find Iced Wine to be very sweet and sugary…some almost too much so and may leave a syrup-type aftertaste – WINE-wise – not tea. This is the first Iced Wine Tea type I have tried and I must say it seems to be the best of both worlds! Lovely!