Continuing with the last chunk of vacation tasting notes.
One of the first tea centered activities we did after leaving Vancouver and heading to Victoria was going to tour Westholme, which is Canada’s first tea farm producing Camellia Sinensis. It’s been around for over a decade now, and I’ve actually been fortunate enough to try some of their tea before as well. However, I wanted to touch the leaves – and touch the leaves I did!
The tour itself didn’t take too long as the farm is fairly small, however the space is beautiful and it was really interesting talking to Victor (the tea producer) and Margit (the in house ceramicist) and learning how the farm had come to be and some of the trials and tribulations that had to be overcome in order to get the bushes producing. Canada is, after all, not the typical climate that Camellia Sinensis grows in.
In addition to plucking some of my own leaves from the bushes and seeing the previous day’s harvest in the process of withering, we also got to taste teas in our own yunomi cups that we were gifted as part of the experience. Victor started with White Mist, which is their white tea they produce, brewed it a very large French press style pot/carafe for our tour group to share. It had been produced just a few days prior to our visit.
The leaves were somewhat crude looking, without the polish you’d expect typically. However, the tea itself was just lovely. I definitely found our first infusion to be less traditional in its tasting notes – very nutty and toasty with a prominent note of milk chocolate that is pretty unlike other white teas I’ve ever had. Underneath those more forefront flavours was a bit of the vegetal, crisp notes I’d more likely expect from a white tea. The second infusion was still plenty flavourful, though significantly less chocolate tasting with more of an overt snap pea flavour to balance out the toasty rice-like flavours.
I did buy some of this tea to take home – crudeness aside, it’s just really interesting as a white tea and I’m excited to get to play around with it a little more with my own steeping parameters!
Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cs1MzSdx_Ka/
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLRuporGK4Q
This sounds intriguing.