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Hallieod drank Pluckley Tea by The Kent & Sussex Tea and Coffee Company

73 tasting notes

I’m going to be doing a bunch of possibly pointless, definitely uninteresting to anyone but me, notes about straight-up strong black Irish/English blends. No ratings for the time being, but at some point.

This — I find confounding (though it’s not alone, as everything about this applies to a couple of Bewley’s teas that aren’t in the database yet). I don’t get a loose leaf tea that’s – as far as my understanding goes – made to be a perfect teabag tea. This is tiny CTC tea – possibly the tiniest bits I’ve come across, and the only way I can make a decent cup of tea is to put it in a teabag. Otherwise, too much dust and you can’t strain it well, and it gets bitter & overly astringent in a flash. So I’m getting a very high quality teabag, by filling one of the huge ones – plenty of room for leaves to move – but I’d rather get a loose-leaf tea when I buy a loose-leaf tea! Taste is good if not mind-blowing, and it is nice and strong.

Preparation

Boiling 3 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.