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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Tea tasting: a man's art

Sniff it, smell it, smack it down

By: Doug Speirs

Posted: 04/28/2009 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

I agreed to hoist myself off the couch Sunday afternoon and drive all the way to St. Boniface Golf Club to take part in an annual manly event.As you have no doubt already guessed, I was there for a tea tasting.

Generally, I do not drink tea at the golf course. At the course, I generally lose golf balls, fling clubs in the water hazard, and wonder if the cart girl thinks my golfing buddies and I are stud muffins in a middle-aged, overweight kind of way.

But I went to the tea tasting, held to raise funds for the Manitoba chapter of Osteoporosis Canada, because (a) we had free tickets; and (b) my wife feels it's important for manly men to occasionally do things their wives want to do, things that generally have nothing to do with lying on the couch and watching the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Do not get me wrong here. I was definitely not the ONLY guy at the tea tasting. I would estimate there were, maybe, six other guys there, including a couple of bartenders, two guys playing bass and keyboard, and two guys from a local funeral home that was one of the event sponsors.

The most important guy there was Bob Krul, who is the co-owner of Cornelia Bean, a swell store on Academy Road that sells about 20 kinds of coffee and 300 kinds of tea that range in price from $5 a pound up to $150.

Bob is an outgoing and unpretentious guy, but he is also the Wayne Gretzky of the tea world. For example, you could ask Bob a hard-hitting tea-related question and, while he was providing a thoughtful answer, pick him up, lock him in the trunk of your car and leave him there for about 30 minutes. When you let him out, Bob would STILL be answering your question about tea in a cheerful manner. That's how much Bob loves tea.

Bob taught me the proper way to brew and drink tea so that people will think I am a classy, sophisticated individual, and I will get to that shortly, but first I want to tell you about spending the afternoon with 300 women, most of whom I had never met.

My wife and I sat at a female-intensive table in the back of the room. Then a bunch of young women served us "dainties," which turn out to be tiny tea sandwiches, tiny scones and tiny cakes. You (and when I say "you" I am referring to "me") could easily eat a dozen of these items with one bite, but this is frowned upon, so you try to make them last several minutes.

The women at our table felt they wanted me to eat most of the little sandwiches, so I did. In between bites, I asked where their husbands were, and they said they were at home watching hockey and/or baseball on TV. I frowned at my wife but she pretended not to notice.

Then we all got in line for one of the highlights, which was two "mar-Tea-nis," tea-infused alcoholic beverages that Bob had whipped up as a special treat. My professional reaction to both these drinks, which you could have either hot or cold, was: "Yummy!"

But not everyone at our table had a journalist's experienced palate. I asked Lorna Grant what she thought of the hot pear-flavoured mar-Tea-ni and she scrunched her face up and said: "Oooh! That's the ugliest drink I've ever had, and I stood in line for it. You're not writing that down, are you?'"

The teas we sampled were poured by celebrity servers, including Kerri Irvin-Ross, who is Manitoba's healthy living minister and with whom I had the following discussion:

The minister: "Cheeky Devil?" Me: "No, I'm Doug Speirs."

The minister: "I know that. The tea is called Cheeky Devil."

Me: "Oh."

Near the end of the tea, I sat down with Bob Krul for a lesson on etiquette. Bob basically said you can drink whatever kind of tea you like from whatever kind of cup you like and you can drink it in any fashion you like.

"People always ask me how high their pinky finger should be," he said, thrusting his pinky out to demonstrate, "I always say it should be like this, so it goes directly into your nose."

Bob demonstrated this technique for me, but I am pretty sure he was just kidding. Anyway, Bob spent a good half-hour educating me. If you want to drink tea like royalty, here's what he suggests:

"Take it up to your nose, sniff it, smell it, put it in your mouth and smack it (here Bob made very loud 'SMACK! SMACK!' noises with his tongue) to open up your taste buds and bring the flavour of the tea into your palate and then just let her go down.

"You'll want to serve organic teas strictly from an estate that will give you the notes your palate is looking for -- the plummy, the reds, the mangoes, the berries, the acidity of the soil, whether it is volcanic or coral ..."

There was a whole lot more. In fact, Bob is such an expert, he's been invited to speak at the World Tea Expo in Las Vegas.

Somebody should remind me to let him out of my trunk before then.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition April 28, 2009 A2

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