Over The Hill Orchards

Cold Brew Sipdown (719)!

Crisp apple cider meets warm cinnamon meets cherry pie!? It’s honestly so good and refreshing, and while this flavour profile works year round there’s something about it that REALLY hits hard as autumnal. I’m going back to SK for Christmas, and I want to see if I can find this somewhere to replenish…

Found this forgotten bag of tea at the bottom of my herbal/rooibos tea sample drawer…

I was deliberately hoarding it for a while because I adore it but no longer have easy access to refills of it now that I’m living in Montreal – but I realize that in hoarding it I also kind of forgot about it. So, made myself a mug earlier in the week and it was so damn good – but it also made me a little bit homesick too. Sweet and tart cherry notes, with hints of cinnamon – like a Cherry Pie!! A bit of an apple-y undertone – hard to avoid that when apple is such a common filler. However, I like the level of tartness, and it feels nice in the mouth.

Maybe I’ll have to see if one of my parents can track this down for me and send it up as a Christmas gift, or something like that…

Iced, in a tea press.

Man – I love this tea! This one was pretty sour/tart with some very distinct choke cherry notes with cinnamon undertones and touches of tart apple. I think for the first time it really clicked for me just how locally inspired this tea is. I mean, the cherry notes just really made me think of the summers spent at my Grandma’s in the heart of the prairies. Plus, as always, there’s a nice pie filling-like quality to this one that’s quite nice.

Sadly I’m almost out of this one, though…

Trying to ration my pouch of this until the Farmer’s Market is back for the Spring/Summer and I can restock, but I did treat myself to a cup of it last week. It was bright, beautiful sweet and tart cherry and those notes were amazing. Weirdly strong cinnamon though, especially in the finish. Usually I’m all for this tea and that particular pairing but in this cup the cinnamon just felt a little out of place to me.

Iced tea.

Still totally in love with this one; a good mix of sweet apple notes and delightfully tart, sour cherry with a little bit of a pop from the cinnamon with makes the apple notes a little more autumnal and pie-like. I think it’s a really nice summer/autumn transitional sort of flavour, too! This particular cup was a little underleafed which just meant that the apple was a little stronger than the cherry this time around, but it still tasted great.

I need to remember to pick up another pouch of this one before the Farmer’s Market closes down for the year because then I have to wait a whole six months to replenish my supply and that’s just not ok with me…

Ugh; I should be working on tasting notes/reviews but it’s so miserably hot in our house today that pretty well all I’ve done is lie around and sweat bullets…

Anyway; this was a cold brew from a bit over a week ago. I really, really enjoyed this tisane a lot the first time I picked it up from the farmer’s market, and when I was there on Canada Day I saw they were still selling it so I grabbed another bag to enjoy! It’s always nice when I can get something tasty and still support local vendors too.

This cold brew was great; very rich bright cherry notes and a real authenticity and juiciness to it. It’s also quite apple-y, and a little bit tart/brighter than I recall it being from the last few iced cups I made – that’s not a complaint though, it’s a very well balanced tartness with the sweetness of the cherry. Plus, the cinnamon undertones are very pleasant and grounding.

I’m glad I nabbed more of this!

Sipdown (236)!

Iced tea! Times two…

So, I had enough leaf of this left to make four hot cups, two hots cups and an iced cup, or two iced cups and I ended up going the route with the fewest cups – iced teas! I was going to make ONE iced cup and then save the rest of the leaf for future hot cups but I finished my first cup and it was just SO good that I needed to make that second iced cup of tea immediately afterwards.

I think this tea is just perfect as an iced tea! It’s tart, but naturally tart from the cherry because there’s actually NO hibiscus in this blend! So, it’s perfect, and much better overall than a hibby alternative. Plus, along with that tartness there’s this lovely sweetness that seems to smoothly sneak out from underneath the tartness until it becomes this plump, ready to burst almost cherry pie filling-like treat! The hints of cinnamon are a good contrast from an otherwise really fruity flavour, and they remind me a lot of cinnamon dusted or infused pie crust. So really, overall, this just REALLY tastes like cherry pie. REALLY good cherry pie.

So far, only place I’ve been able to find this one is the farmer’s market – so I guess I need to get my ass back to the farmer’s market next Saturday I have off to restock.

Just… SO good.

Latte!

…but not necessarily one that I’d recommend. That’s not to say it tasted bad though, it’s not quite that simple I’m afraid. The main issue is that the tea DEFINITELY curdles when you latte it. To be completely fair, looking at the ingredients list for this tisane I 100% knew that was a possibility; there’s apple and a few other things that could have enough citric acid to curdle a drink.

So, I ended up with a curdled latte. That’s not the end of the world though; I just strained the liquor (twice for good measure) so all the curdled parts of it were out and then I was left with an actual latte – and a lilac colored one, no less!

And it tasted SO good! It was essentially exactly like going through the motion of eating slice of cherry pie, complete with scoop of creamy vanilla ice cream. The mouthfeel was silky and rich, sans curdled bits. The first taste? This gentle, light cinnamon that could have easily been cinnamon sugar dusted over pie crust or sprinkled on ice cream. From there, sweet and succulent cherry compote/pie filling notes with apple cider-y undertones and finally a creamy finish from the milk base.

So good – just a real hassle.

This is a queued tasting note.

The first Farmer’s Market of the year was last week, and I happened to have the day off so I decided to get out of the house and go to that. I like the idea of buying local as much as possible, and admittedly I was hoping I’d scrounge up a Saskatoon Berry pie or something along those lines. Damn do I love me a Saskatoon Berry pie.

Instead of pie, however, I wound up bringing home a different haul: several different kinds of flavoured honey, this tea, and some locally grown Beluga Lentils which wound up becoming a solid tea infused meal, which I’ll write about at a future time. My honey haul was pretty large too – coffee honey, chocolate honey, cinnamon honey, spiced orange honey, and a regular creamed honey.

As for the tea? The idea of finding tea was actually not even remotely on my mind when I went there but I saw this and then got especially excited when hibiscus and rosehips weren’t ingredients in it even a little bit. I had to get it.

I tried it with some of the normal creamed honey because that seemed appropriate for my Farmer’s Market themed day/trip. This was actually really good. I was honestly taken aback by how unique of a blend it is overall too. The cherry comes though well, and is playfully tart and then the addition of both apple and cinnamon almost give this a sort of “cherry cider” vibe all in all. The seabuckthorn leaf is a weird ingredient for me: I have had it before, but I’m not familiar enough with it to really be able to totally isolate the flavour of it from the other notes in the blend.

But honestly – for what seemed like a mildly gimmicky find I was REALLY pleased with this tisane. If the vendor ever showed up with other tea flavours, I know it wouldn’t take much to talk me into trying those too.