The Cove Tea Company

The Cove Tea Company is on Brookside Avenue in Spruce Grove, the city just west of Edmonton, and its site gives the street and the postal code but neither a street number nor opening hours; orders can be picked up in the shop, usually ready in two to four days, or shipped. Everything on the list is blended in house and organic, and the catalogue runs past sixty references across black, green, oolong, chai, rooibos and herbal, with the tea bombs, hand-made syrups, bottled lattes and elixirs that have become the second half of the business.

The sizes are the point of entry: a 1 oz tin, a 2 oz pouch, then 4 oz, 8 oz and a pound. English Breakfast and Earl Grey cost CA$ 11 the tin, Sencha and Gunpowder CA$ 10, West Coast Mint CA$ 9 and the Rooibos Chai CA$ 10, with the Seeyok Estate Darjeeling at CA$ 15, Jasmine Pearls at CA$ 17 and a Uji Gyokuro at CA$ 22. A few teas start at the 57 g pouch because the tin is sold out: Assam Gold at CA$ 26, Hojicha at CA$ 25, Masala Chai at CA$ 19 and the 99 % oxidised Purple Oolong at CA$ 28.

Beyond the counter the house caters tea bars for events and keeps a seasonal bistro menu on its site, and it is the only shop in Spruce Grove that sells leaf tea rather than bags. The Japanese shelf is the surprise: a shaded Uji gyokuro and a roasted hojicha are rare enough in a city of this size, and the Sencha, which the shop describes as a Japanese-style green grown in China, is priced as the everyday cup. The oolong is a single purple-leaf lot, oxidised almost all the way to black, which is the shop's own way of covering the category.