For the past couple weeks, I’ve had a miserable cold that wiped out my ability to smell or taste anything with any accuracy. The only upside was being able to sip down this tea, which I’ve had since 2015. (In a mistake that might haunt me to my grave, I placed an order with Tealirious the week that Butiki was having their closing sale. I’d just gotten into tea and didn’t know what I was doing.)
This tea is pretty, with lots of fluffy golden tips, but that’s almost the only good thing I can say about it. The first steep is a tannic kick in the teeth. When my palate recovers, I get notes of hay, barnyard, cardboard, faint sweet potato, caramel, earth, and malt. Lowering the leaf amount tempers the tannins and astringency a little, but leaves me with a bland but still drying cup. I tried gonfuing this tea to get rid of it faster, and it’s one of the only times I haven’t finished a session.
This tea might have been better with milk or sugar or as a cold brew with lots of flavouring, but plain, it’s pretty bad. It’s probably the worst tea I received from Tealirious, which had decent teas overall. Its awfulness can’t be attributed to its age, either, as I remember trying it when I bought it and immediately pushing it to the back of my cupboard in consternation. Glad to finally see it go.
Flavors: Astringent, Barnyard, Caramel, Cardboard, Drying, Earth, Hay, Malt, Sweet Potatoes, Tannin
