City Slicker

Home Brew

There’s a storm of interest in hot, infused Alberta beverages.

Turns out, the tempest is in the teapot   

Story By Jennifer Cockrall-King 

It takes a few minutes to convince the Maitre d’ at the Fairmont Hotel Macdonald that I’m intentionally reserving for one person in the hotel’s Harvest Room for the popular Royal High Tea. I explain that I’m looking forward to an hour of being fussed over and waited on, and enjoying an extravagant array of savoury and sweet bites with a few cups of expertly brewed exotic teas. Eventually he concedes that people don’t take time to do these things nearly enough anymore. He sounds a little envious.

As beverages go, tea and herbal infusions have been having a moment in the sun. I’m always distracted by the overflowing varieties of it in my local grocery store. I can’t seem to pick up a loaf of bread and a carton of eggs without buying the latest colourful package, with a romantic name promising the taste of an African savannah sunset in each cup.

Afternoon tea (also known as high tea) is a leftover from the Victorian era, a British mid-afternoon tradition which involves tea and dainty finger sandwiches and elaborate bite-sized pastries; it’s enjoying a resurgence in popularity across Canada. It seems I’m not the only one who needs time off from today’s constant buzz of cell phones, iPods and text messages.

The Fairmont Hotel Macdonald used to offer afternoon tea in the winter only, but had to expand it to summer because it proved to be so popular.

I arrive at the Hotel Macdonald on a lovely sunny Saturday afternoon. Maitre d’ Carlos Hernandez takes me to my table, which faces beautiful 10-foot windows and glass doors, where I can look out over what is arguably the best river valley view in Edmonton. Inside the dining room I can hear the gentle din and banter of people in the open kitchen, but it’s still an oasis of calm in this otherwise bustling hotel.

The table is set with a light pink cloth, simple white china and the hotel’s signature silverware. The menu is daunting. Vanilla-perfumed fruit cocktail; scones with strawberry preserves and Devonshire cream; Atlantic smoked salmon pinwheel on rye with dill cream cheese; devilled egg salad on baguette; mango chicken with cilantro aioli on a mini kaiser roll; assorted pastries, and specialty and herbal teas (and/or freshly brewed coffee!) My server, Olivia, assures me that it’s considered a light mid-day snack. Suddenly, I find myself thankful I’m not corseted.

Tea is the world’s second most popular beverage, next to water. According to the Tea Association of Canada, our nation consumed 61.4 litres of tea, per capita, in 2007. That’s about 270 cups for each Canadian. I choose a Madagascar vanilla-scented Ceylon black tea with an orchid-like scent from among the dozen or so custom Fairmont hotel blends. Then Olivia arrives with my fruit salad, and shortly afterwards she gently places the three-tiered china tea stand at my side. It occurs to me that the best thing about a solitary tea is not having to share the last drop of jam, cream, the last scone, or negotiate who will get the devilled egg sandwich. I eat every last bite in exactly the order that I choose to do so.

With the energy from all that caffeine and theophylline, two stimulants found in most black teas, and a very satisfied stomach, I decide to look into some Alberta varieties. Why not treat myself to a mid-day cuppa local brew, even if there will be no cucumber sandwiches, freshly baked pâtisseries, or three-tiered tea stands.

I’m not expecting to find any tea plantations in Picture Butte or Peace River, but we have local companies who blend imported teas with locally grown herbs and other plants for truly unique and innovative products.

I immediately think of the Edmonton-based tea and beverage company VitalyTeas, with its line of spiced chai concentrates and certified organic blends. VitalyTeas owner Fanta Camara started the company with her husband Marc-André Sabourin in 1999. “I am a tea-lover, but I dislike unnatural flavours, so I started creating my own blends with organic herbs for myself, my family and friends,” explains Camara, in her French-accented English. She grew up in Senegal, West Africa, where tea is taken seriously as a drink and as a social occasion.

One of Camara’s first products was a chai concentrate – a heady mixture of aromatic spices and sweetened black tea, often consumed with hot milk – and some hand-blended loose tea mixes. “I wanted a product that I would enjoy making and sharing with others,” she says. Customers were thrilled, and so were Alberta chefs, who added her products to their menus around the province. Camara stuck to her belief that using quality natural and organic ingredients, whenever possible, is important. Her tea leaves are not strictly a local product, because the evergreen tea plant, Camellia sinensis, grows in tropical and subtropical areas. Camara chose a supplier who is a member of the Ethical Tea Partnership, an organization dedicated to fair-trade principles and shared responsibility for the social, ethical conditions of growers and workers. But the company is proud to support local herb growers. “Sixty percent of the certified organic herbs we use in our chais and tea blends are grown right here in Alberta,” she says. Camara even uses unpasteurized Alberta honey as a sweetener in her Original Canada Chai concentrate. The tea industry here is worth $59 million, thanks to a few entrepreneurial tea-totallers who have turned their passion for it into a thriving business. 

Another one of those is Natural Farmworks Ltd., a 1,600-acre certified organic farm and 40,000-square-foot processing facility in Barrhead. This company has just launched a line of Green Barley Leaf Teas that has me intrigued. Its blends of certified organic Alberta green barley grass (like those stands of wheatgrass that started appearing at smoothie bars and in health food stores several years ago,) are cut, dried and blended with organic herbs, such as chamomile and mint, and fitted into pyramid-shaped tea bags. 

“How come I haven’t heard of you before?” I ask Lori Wheeler, the one-woman marketing department of this 12-year-old company. Company founder and president Brad McNish left police work to become a farmer, and had first-hand knowledge of the health challenges of shift work. He decided he would blend his love of organic, holistic farming with a desire to help people lead healthier lives. In the late 1990s, Natural Farmworks sold organic seaweed as a soil amendment to farmers. The company evolved to natural mineral products and green leaf barley sprouts as a high-protein, nutrient-filled bonanza for livestock. When they discovered that it also tasted great, they decided to market it to people.

“We’re in the habit of tasting these leaves right in the field,” Wheeler says. In 2001, the company bought and expanded a processing plant and pioneered techniques to capture these green nutritional powerhouses, packed with chlorophyll, antioxidants, protein and other nutrients, and render them into a powdered form. From varieties of spinach, pea, barley, wheat and alfalfa, it developed a concentrated and high quality protein mix that provides all the benefits of dark green, leafy vegetables. When Natural Farmworks had its barley greens tested for nutritional value, Wheeler and McNish discovered that the mild-tasting leaves had many of the same nutritional qualities tea leaves are prized for. Plus, they are caffeine-free and rich in antioxidants.

Their focus has always been certified organic greens, grown in and harvested at their most nutrient-dense stage, when the plants are standing as grass and before they have diverted nutrients into seeds or grain. Most of the product is sold in bulk and custom processed in food and natural products, but they are now creating their own brand. “That’s why the teas are being launched,” says Wheeler. “It’s an evolution to finally creating our own products.”

The result is the new lineup: Clean Green Chai (a caffeine-free combo of green barley leaf, ginger, cinnamon, clove and star anise), Routine Green Sencha (with young green barley leaves and Sencha green tea), Serene Green Calming (green barley leaves, peppermint, chamomile and lemon balm.) Since finding two exciting tea companies right in my own backyard, I’m now determined to search out and sip even more locally made products. We might have a budding local tea culture on our hands, and that’s worth breaking out the three-tiered sandwich stand for. 

High time for tea

According to lore, high tea was the brainchild of the Seventh Duchess of Bedford, Anna Russell, who suffered from a “sinking feeling” around 4 p.m. every day. In the early to mid-1800s, it was customary to eat only two large meals a day, breakfast and then a rather large dinner around 8 or 9 p.m.

To get through the afternoon, the Duchess would have a pot of tea, cakes and sandwiches brought to her discreetly by her servants. Her mid-day snacks were not a well kept secret, mainly because

she began inviting her friends to join her. The idea of a mid-day meal with tea caught on all over the British Empire and has stayed with us ever since.

To find out where to buy VitalyTeas, visit www.vitalyteas.com. Buy Natural Farmworks’ products direct from www.naturalfarmworks.net.