Product Review: Northern Delights Inuit Herbal Tea

Raven Reads, a book box subscription service designed to promote and support indigenous authors and indigenous owned companies, previously featured Northern Delights Inuit Herbal Tea (website available in English and French) in one of their boxes, and offered up additional boxes of this tea in multiple flavours for purchase after. I grabbed two different blends during their Canada Day sale.

Avataq Cultural Institute is an Inuit cultural institute in Nunavik, Quebec (with the website being available in English, French, and Inuktitut). The institute has five Inuit board of directors and consults local Inuit elders on a regular basis, and their ultimate goal is preserving and promoting Inuit culture. They created Northern Delights with the intention of sharing delicious teas made from Arctic ingredients traditionally used by Inuit.

I have included the descriptions from the Northern Delights website linked above, as well as my own impressions of each tea blend I tried.

Blend #4: Crowberry / Paurnagaqutik

Deeply satisfying, the rich violet colour of Blend #4 comes from the hand-picked crowberry leaves. This herbal tea has a refreshingly crisp taste and an intense hue from crowberry, hibiscus blossoms, juniper berries, and red poppy flowers. The crowberry tea has a gentle touch that makes Blend #4 particularly satisfying. Ingredients: Hibiscus flowers, lemongrass herb, birch leaves, crowberry leaves, natural flavours, juniper berries, citric acid, cinnamon bark, red poppy flowers, star anise, licorice root, cloves.

When I opened up the package the tea arrived at my home in, the first thing I noticed was the fantastic smell emanating from this one. The crowberry blend has a sort of spicy-sweet berry tea smell that is incredibly appetizing. After it steeped for a few minutes, it was a pretty purple colour, and the smell was still pleasant.

Anyone who enjoys berry / herbal teas will find this one tasty. The berry flavour was nice, the hibiscus was pleasantly noticeable, and the unfamiliar ingredients tasted lovely. As I bought a full box of it, I tried it with and without sugar. Without sugar, it had that gentle spicy-sweet berry taste that the smell would indicate. I found it pleasant without sugar, but those with a particularly sweet tooth may find themselves not enjoying it as much if it is unsweetened. With sugar, I found that it really accentuated the sweetness of the berry taste, and left the sort of spicy taste in the background, giving it more of a standard berry tea flavour. Either way, I really enjoyed the flavours in this blend, and found it really pleasant to drink.

When this first arrived in the mail, I was actually very sick with a severe cold at the time. I found that the tea sat in my stomach very gently, and soothed the ache in my throat. It made for a wonderful way to soothe my mind and body while I was feeling so unwell.

Blend #2: Cloudberry / Arpiqutik

Subtle and reminiscent of maple, with cloudberry leaves and roasted dandelion root. This amber coloured herbal tea welcomes the wanderer home with hand-picked cloudberry leaves, sarsaparilla root, fenugreek seeds and roasted maté leaves. Ingredients: Sarsaparilla root, fenugreek seeds, carob, cloudberry leaves, roasted chicory root, cinnamon bark, maté roasted leaf.

When I first opened the package of the cloudberry blend, I was surprised by the scent. It left me feeling really uncertain and unsure about the tea, as I wasn’t sure I was entirely fond of it. I assume that it was the sarsaparilla, as that is something I am not overly familiar with. Once I actually steeped the tea, I did find the scent to be significantly more pleasant, with a unique and unfamiliar sweetness to the smell. The amber colour was as the description led me to believe.

I did find the taste to be reminiscent of maple, as described. The taste was a bit stronger in the cloudberry blend, but not unpleasant. I did find myself genuinely surprised at how much I enjoyed this one (although I did find myself enjoying the crowberry flavour more) because of how unsure I was about the smell. The herbal flavouring was really nice, especially with that cinnamon taste lurking in the background. Anyone who usually enjoys a stronger flavoured herbal tea will likely enjoy this. I tried it with and without sugar for comparison. Without sugar, the maple taste was much more subtle, and it had a pleasant earthy flavour. With sugar, the described maple flavour was more prominent, with that earthy flavour being much less noticeable.

I also tried the cloudberry blend while sick, and I’m very glad that I did. I found that it was incredibly effective in making me feel better for the time. It was gentle on my stomach, heaven on my throat, and helped me relax into a state that left me feeling less unwell. While I do have a bit of a preference for the flavour of the crowberry blend, I found the cloudberry blend a bit better for while I was sick.

I genuinely enjoyed both teas a lot, and would definitely be willing to buy more of either, try any of the other three blends, or recommend it to anyone looking for a new tea to try.

Additionally, I paired these teas with a book about Arctic plants with edible and medicinal uses. Walking with Aalasi: An Introduction to Edible and Medicinal Arctic Plants (2009, Inhabit Media) by Anna Ziegler, Aalasi Joamie, and Rebecca Hainnu (written in both English and Inuktitut) was a wonderful introduction to Arctic plants. I felt that it gave me a better understanding of some of the ingredients used in Northern Delights teas, and a better appreciation for the tea I was drinking.

 

Additional note: Many herbal teas include ingredients that might interfere with doctor prescribed medications. Some of the blends sold by Northern Delights include ingredients that might interfere with your medications. If you are on medication, you should look into the ingredients of any herbal tea to ensure you aren’t going to cause yourself any problems. Any teas that contain ingredients that might affect your medication should probably either be avoided, or taken at a different time than your medication. The teas that I selected for myself were ones that I knew would not have that kind of impact on me, but might have that kind of impact on someone else. Herbal ingredients and herbal medicines are wonderful, but everyone should be aware of how it is going to affect their health conditions and their medications.