Tasting Lab: Birch Blend

This is a blend that I've had rolling around in the back of my mind for a while. Birch trees evoke a very quiet, wintery feeling to me, like a silent night under a thick blanket of snow, or a crisp day with pale white birch trees covered in white frost, starkly contrasting against a bright blue sky. So I specifically kept this blend for November, because no other time of year felt quite as fitting. Birch bark has this pleasant, mild, minty-cinnamony note to it, and I thought it would pair well with a nutty, sweet black blend. It was just a matter of fine-tuning and settling on the recipe. The result is something sweet, light, and comforting. Maybe not the heavy, cozy tea I often associate with winter time, but still a blend that feels perfectly paired with a crisp, airy morning spent on the porch, wrapped up and watching the fall of oversized snowflakes.

On building this blend, Keemun was my first choice as a base--sweet potato, rose, smoke, and very little astringency. But I found it's thick mouthfeel washed out the birch just on its own. The addition of a second flush Nepal brightened it with green, nutty and floral notes, and lightened the flavour of the tea just enough for the gentle spearmint and woodsy flavours of the birch to peak through. Nilgiri cups similarly to Sri Lankan teas, but lighter, and this ended up rounding out the blend--adding just enough body to keep the tea from being too thin. The result is a gentle, flavourful tea that took very well to the added barks.

I find birch bark has a very light, woodsy taste. It gets described as 'wintergreen', which is apt enough. I would describe it as lightly woody, like a blend of green and red rooibos, with a spearmint note that lingers into the aftertaste, fresh and gently herbaceous, paired with a hint of sweetness like cinnamon. On its own, it's a little cooling, which is why I grasped onto that faint cinnamony flavour. I found adding a little cinnamon bark alongside the birch warms the blend up just enough that it feels like a very cozy tea to drink by the window. It's not a bold, flavoured tea; the flavours are nuanced, light. Perhaps a little too light for milk, but I don't think this tea needs it. A tea for savouring.

The final blend opens with a woodsy, sweet note, faint spearmint followed by cinnamon warming the front of the tongue, then sweet potato and starchy notes of plantains. A mixture of heady and light florals, a touch of body, nuts like almond, pecan and chestnut. The woodsy sweetness of the birch bark lingers throughout the sip, with warmth and mint trailing in the aftertaste.