Tea Blog

Monk’s Blend Tea is a highly prized grenadine flavored black tea. This particular Monk’s Blend Tea combines a bright and delicious grenadine with a more mellow vanilla flavor to balance out the slight tartness that the grenadine brings.

Grenadine is a red syrup used in some cocktails and other specialty drinks. The slightly tart yet sharply fruity characteristic flavor of grenadine can be obtained from a mixture of blackcurrant juice and other fruit juices, as long as the blackcurrant flavor is dominant. So one might say it is a Blackcurrant blend, even though grenadine was originally created from pomegranate juice. And indeed the flavor is somewhere between the more bitter blackcurrant, and the juicer pomegranate.

Blackcurrant is well known throughout Europe and especially the United Kingdom, as a distinctively sweetly sharp berry used in candies, liquors, jams and more. However it is much lesser known in the United States where it has been banned from being farmed since the early 1900s as it was seen as a threat to the logging industry. The ban was only lifted in some states as recently as 2003, and in some states such as Maine,Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

However due to the ban on blackcurrants, most people in the United States remain unaware of this antioxidant and vitamin-rich berry, and it’s unique flavor. Although now that the ban on farming has been mostly lifted, it is making a slow but sure comeback in the United States, and awareness of it’s potential as an extremely healthy addition to the diet is growing.

Grenadine is said to have a flavor very similar to that of a blackcurrant and indeed this tea does have an overall flavor which is similar to blackcurrant combined with pomegranate juice, with a subtle whisper of cherry. The aroma is strongly juicy with a delicious fragrance whether the leaves are dry or brewing. The flavors blend very well with the solid black tea base and make this a delicious, refreshing tea whether served hot or iced.

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