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Hallieod drank Rooibos Gingerbread and Orange Biscuit by The Kent & Sussex Tea and Coffee Company

73 tasting notes

Just finished the last of this off and will have to do a few, “let me be fair” type comments to qualify my meh rating. First thing is that I was probably looking for – not a replacement – but an everyday, cheaper version of Yumchaa’s Chilli Chilli Bang Bang. That’s just not fair to most teas! Also, silly of me to try this one probably, as I’d never put orange biscuits in my gingerbread. Had it had any noticeable ginger flavours, a bit of orange might have been okay, but all I got from this was a rather faint generic citrus fruit. It should have had more taste, as there really are big bits of almond, peppercorns, and ginger is hardly an expensive ingredient to add to your gingerbread tea! (Actually, my bad again for not thinking harder about that ingredient list.) I’m guessing Yumchaa’s rooibos base is a lot better too, as if I weren’t looking at the tea, but drinking on a blind taste test, I don’t think I’d know it was rooibos.

All in all, not offensive in any way, but not something I’ll buy again.

Preparation

Boiling 5 min, 0 sec

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I’ve been drinking tea pretty much all my life, allowing for the fact that there probably was no tea in my baby-bottles. I gave it up twice, once when a then-boyfriend sneered at me for being addicted (okay, I was, but I was also stubborn enough to bear a week of the blinding headaches and overwhelming exhaustion that followed cold-turkey withdrawal), and once on my first pregnancy. Neither experience gave me any reason to believe a life without tea is a good life.

Having spent most of my younger days in Ireland, where tea is everywhere, and mostly it’s decent, I whined my way across the States in the 80s and first half of the 90s. Now back in Dublin, and the tea situation is a bit mixed, but there’s the internet to provide what nearby shops don’t!

I started drinking green and white teas as well as my staple black a good few years ago now, but have recently decided I need to LEARN something more about tea than the little I know.

My likes:
- strong black tea blends; some flavoured blacks, such as Earl Grey and a small (but growing) number of other fruit and flower-flavoured ones; and chai. (For some daft reason, I feel like a tea fraud drinking sweet chai at home, though I’ll happily drink it out.)

- Chinese greens (may update this when I’ve learned enough to be more specific); some flavoured greens, especially if they’re made by the fabulous Yumchaa; Genmaicha; getting to like Sencha, as long as it’s not too bitter.

- White tea, pretty much as long as it’s good quality, I like it. Some flavoured ones are nice, though it’s easy to overpower the more delicate taste of white.

- Rooibos, which I know, I know, isn’t properly ‘tea’. (As above for Yumchaa flavoured rooibos – some of my favourites.)

Dislikes:
- Any black tea made by someone who doesn’t know you need BOILING WATER. (See above about the Whining Years.)

- Hibiscus in fruit-flavoured teas. Looks so pretty! Tastes so awful!

I’m working on trying to like Hojicha, which isn’t going too well yet. Jane Pettigrew describes it as “biscuity”, but unless she’s eaten a lot of cigarette-flavoured biscuits in her time, I don’t get it.

- Aniseed in spiced teas. (Just discovered this one for the dislike list today, in an otherwise-tasty chai. Don’t like the tongue-numbing effect.)

Indecisive, despite being opinionated – okay, very opinionated – so may just add notes rather than rating.