Tea Horse, established in 2017 by Denise Atkinson, Anishinaabe ikwe (English: Ojibwe woman) and her partner Marc H. Bohémier, is an Indigenous-owned artisanal tea company located on the traditional territory of the Anishinaabeg Peoples in Northwestern Ontario. With its proprietary roasting process, Tea Horse has created and produces an industry-first selection of custom roasted wild rice (Ojibwe: manoomin) and tea blends.

Tea Horse Tea has three wild rice tea offerings. One is named Manoomin Cha—”manoomin” means the good grain in Ojibway, and “cha” is tea in Mandarin and Cantonese—and is a green Japanese tea blended with their roasted wild rice. They describe it as having the fresh grassiness of green tea with a roasted nuttiness. ​

Manoomin Cha Dark Roast takes dark roasted green tea, Hojicha, sourced directly from Japan, and blends it with a roasted wild rice. It has a mocha taste that is a coffee alternative. Their last wild rice option is a roasted wild rice that is infused as a beverage, called Manoominaaboo Tisane, which translates loosely as wild rice water. The caffeine-free tea is one of their best sellers among Southeast Asian customers, as it’s reminiscent of the roasted barley tea consumed in Korea and Taiwan. 

No one else in the tea world is doing what they’re doing (their blends are trademarked and names are copyrighted), blending teas with wild rice, creating a bold, unique flavour. “We think that our wild rice teas pair well with traditional Indigenous foods like salmon, fiddleheads, wild meats,” says Bohémier. 

“We’ve been working really hard at creating the right flavor profiles,” he adds, mentioning how secret they are about their blends. “We’re going to be like Colonel Sanders, without secret herbs and spices but in the way we blend it, and the proportions and ratios of how we blend it.”