Many thanks to Laurent at Nina’s Paris for the sample. I admit that I was a bit apprehensive about this tea – it’s a black tea (which makes my stomach hurt) AND a berry tea (which I rarely enjoy). Still, it’s Nina’s and I wanted the sipdown, so I decided to give it a shot.
I had the teabag version, which comes in a pyramid bag. Even before brewing, this tea smells utterly fantastic. Although it’s a blend of berry flavors, it doesn’t smell generic or artificial. The brewed tea is a nice deep red berry color. The taste is hard for me to describe… the berry flavors blend together very well, but are also distinctly identifiable. This is really quite wonderful. I can’t make out much about the underlying tea base. I’m not very good with black teas anyway, since I drink them so rarely. I can say that I’m not picking up any astringency and that there is just a slight touch of dryness.
This tea goes quite well with a berry-based dessert (in my case, a raspberry Milano cookie). I’m a little sad to say that this is a sipdown.
