2238 Tasting Notes
340/365
This is pretty simple – a sencha base with strawberries and cream flavouring. The dry leaf smells fruity – mouthwateringly so – but I wouldn’t necessarily have said strawberry straight off the bat. Fruit punch, maybe?
Fortunately, it tastes like strawberry. It’s quite subtle, but it has a really delicious background creaminess. They definitely nailed that aspect! The strawberry is candy-like and obviously not natural, but it’s not glaringly artificial either. I feel like it strikes a nice balance, and it’s pleasantly sweet and desserty without being cloying. The sencha base is smooth and very lightly vegetal, but that works well with the strawberry so no complaints.
While I’d say this is a nice strawberry green, it’s probably not one I’d go out and buy in full-size since the packaging is so awful – and, to be honest, there are lots of similar teas out there. This one’s good, but it’s not exceptional. Just…nice.
Talk about damning with faint praise!
Preparation
339/365
…and another from the Chai sampler! This is one I’ve been looking forward to, since Assam is one of my favourite black teas and I like a Chai with a decently strong base. I was pleased to see this one wasn’t a CTC; it seems truer to the spirit of Assam that way! This one’s a fairly simple chai blend, with just cardamom, cinnamon, clove, and black pepper.
I like this one, as I knew I would, although it’s a little heavier on the clove than I’d hoped. There’s also rather a lot of cardamom, although I don’t mind that so much. The cinnamon pulls it back, though, and the pepper! I love a chai with lots of black pepper, and this one ticks that box without question.
It’s straightforward and classic, no kookiness here! It also means it’s not particularly unique, but there’s room for that. A solid chai in autumn is never a bad thing!
Preparation
338/365
I’ve not tried any Pukka teas in a long time, so I figured it was time to give them another go. They’re pretty standard bagged supermarket affairs on the whole, but there are some gems to be found sometimes. This one’s a blend of liquorice, ginger, echinacea, beetroot, aniseed, elderflower, peppermint, orange peel, rosehip, elderberry, acerola cherry, and blackcurrant. So, quite busy then! There’s no hibi at least.
I chose this one today specifically because my throat is sore again, and I’d rather it didn’t develop into a full-blown cold. That would be silly – I’ve had four already since the end of August.
In practice, this one isn’t as muddled or confused-tasting as I feared it might be. The liquorice is very subtle (thankfully!), as is the ginger. The flavours that seem to predominate are aniseed and blackcurrant, although there are hints of cherry and elderflower, and a tiny bit of orange in the background. There’s a slight earthiness that I’m attributing to the echinacea and the beetroot, but it’s mild. I don’t mind it much, in any case, since it cuts through some of the liquorice sweetness.
I’m pretty pleased with this one! It’s more pleasant than I thought it’d be, and I’d definitely drink it again. It’s not often I say that about a tea with liquorice as an ingredient!
Preparation
I was in the same boat(not having tried any in a long time) and ordered a sampler of them from Amazon. I wouldn’t recommend it though as the photo showed some that I wanted to try and I ended up not receiving them. It was a good price though. Some of them have been retired since then. The mint ones tended to be more enjoyable for me. Back in the day though I was obsessed with Pukka’s Love tea blend.
337/365
The first thing I noticed about this one was that it contains rose petals rather than the more usual cornflowers, which makes it both different and pretty – an excellent combination! It also smells delicious – really, really peachy!
Suprisingly, it tastes peachy also, which is as amazing as it is unexpected. It’s the best kind of peach, too – not artificial at all, but nicely juicy and fruity. Like an actual ripe peach. There isn’t a lot of bergamot, so this would be an excellent EG for a bergamot hater (I know you’re out there…I think I used to be one of you!) It’s muted and subtle, and you could pretty much pretend it’s not there for what you can taste of it. The black tea base is very smooth with a nectar-like sweetness that perfectly complements the peach flavouring.
I was expecting a pretty standard EG, but this is far from being that. I think this is what I thought Bird & Blend’s Earl’s Paradise would be like, before I was bitterly (and that’s no joke…) disappointed. I’m struggling to call this one an EG, though – it’s really a peach-flavoured black playing dress-up.
Preparation
This was the EG I got to adapt my palate to bergamot (yup, I was that person that used to hate it). I needed something to babystep my tongue into it, and used this tea. Still love it, one of the only teas I’m willing to put up with T2’s shit packaging for. To me the peach tastes more like lychee and I like the floral overtones, too. And now I can drink EGs fine so long as they are on the more mild side or have some additional flavorings.
336/365
This is one of my favourite autumn blends of all time, and still one of the best pumpkin teas I’ve ever tried. That’s largely because it actually tastes squashy, rather than over-sweet and artificial. I made today’s cup as a latte, using 100ml hot milk and 300ml boiling water, plus ½ tsp of vanilla essence. I feel like that’s added just the right amount of sweetness. The spicing in this one is pretty muted, but I don’t mind that. It’s seriously all about the pumpkin here. There’s a light background butteriness that reminds me of pastry, so it could very well be pie. It just tastes a bit of imagination!
I know aesthetics are kind of shallow, but this one also looks the part for Halloween. There are little pumpkin and bat sprinkles, plus fairly large pieces of dried pumpkin; super cute! I missed out on this one for a few years because of all the stuff I had going on, but I’m glad I finally got things back together again this year. I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed this one.
If you like pumpkin, you need to try this – it’s the best!
Preparation
335/365
Finally got around to trying this one! To be honest, I think I neglected it because I’m a bit scared of ginger, but it’s actually okay. I made my cup up as a latte, which is one of the only ways I find matcha palatable – matcha and ginger is another step into the unknown for me, because ordinarily ginger is something I don’t really like.
It’s spicy – definitely the spiciest thing I’ve tried in a while. It’s also sweet, though, and very much reminiscent of ginger biscuits. It also reminds me of cheesecake base, in a buttery, biscuit kind of way. The ginger is very prominent, but in practice I don’t mind it. I think the milk helps to make it creamier and a bit softer than it otherwise would be, but I’d happily drink this again. It’s a nice, warming autumnal matcha – pretty perfect for a cold, damp October evening!
334/365
I’ve been interested in this one for a while, but I’ve only just now got around to trying it. It’s a blend of cranberry, blueberry, dragonfruit and goji berries – and I think it’s everything I hoped Twinkle Berry would be, but wasn’t.
It brews up very pale – just about peach in shade terms – but I’m glad there’s no hibi here. T2 seem to be good for not relying on hibi too heavily when it comes to their fruit blends, which is one of the things I appreciate most about them. It’s certainly not their packaging I love! Whoever came up with that needs to be court-martialed. I digress.
This one’s nicely fruity, despite it’s pale and innocuous appearance. The blueberry really shines, followed by the cranberry (which is just a little bit tart.) You have to look harder for the dragonfruit, and the goji berries are very subtle, but I’m okay with that. There’s blueberry, after all!
I found this one nicely juicy and refreshing. Today’s cup was prepared hot, but I’m wiling to bet it would also work really well cold – largely due to the lack of hibi. This one’s a winner with me!
Preparation
333/365
I’ve tried this one before, but a long, long time ago. I don’t really remember it that well, so I’m happy to have the chance to revisit. I say that like it happened by accident, but it didn’t…I bought a box with my last T2 order, knowing that my Dad would love it even if I didn’t. He’s all about the grapefruit.
It was a little more bitter than I was expecting, but very grapefruity…and grapefruit is bitter, so I guess it’s actually perfect. It’s really clean and refreshing; an excellent morning or palate cleansing blend. I meant to try this one back in the summer, but I totally forgot – I can imagine it would be seriously good cold brewed with lots of ice!
It’s perhaps a little one dimensional, but I’m feeling it…sometimes it’s best not to over-complicate, and this is a really solid grapefruit blend. Also, no hibi! Always a bonus.
I’d happily drink this one again, which is reassuring given that I have an entire cube. It’s good stuff, and pretty unique amongst the fruit blends in my cupboard. I feel like grapefruit isn’t often a candidate for these kind of things, which is a shame.
Preparation
332/365
This is one of the more straightforward blends from the Vadham chai sampler; for some reason, I seem to have saved those until last! I quite like cardamom, so this should be okay.
Like some of the other blends from the sampler, this one has a CTC base, with lots of whole and crushed cardamom pods. As you might expect, it brews up really quickly. I’d say it definitely needs milk.
To taste, it’s significantly smoother than I expected, although that’s probably mostly a result of my own prejudices – not all CTCs are equal, after all. Some are more equal than others, and this is one of them.
Did it just get a little Orwellian around here? Just me, maybe.
The cardamom is very prominent, also as you might expect. It strikes a nice balance, though, and isn’t too harsh. The base tea is nicer than I expected; malty and fairly sweet. I expected it to be on the tannic side, maybe even verging on bitter/astringent, but it’s none of those things desipte the fact that I left it at least four minutes because I got distracted. By work, of all things.
The cardamom pretty much overpowers any other spices, but if you like cardamom then that’s going to be okay – and you probably wouldn’t have bought this blend if you didn’t. The overall flavour isn’t what I think of as chai, but it’s a solid cardamom flavoured black. There are worse things in the world.
Preparation
331/365
Finally there, with the last of the Game of Tea fandom sampler blends! This one’s a blend of Masala Chai, Tiger Eye, and Gunpowder – which strikes me as a pretty odd combination.
To taste, the gunpowder is more prominent than I’d have liked it to be – it’s a little dank tasting in the way it sometimes can be. Like stagnant water in a well. It’s not quite bitter, but I feel like it’s getting there…and I’m pretty sure it’s not my brewing parameters since I was careful, knowing gunpowder not to be a favourite of mine generally.
The chai isn’t a fantastic combo with this particular type of green tea, I don’t think. I can almost see it working, but I entirely for the wrong reasons – I appreciated it most because it was a distraction from the gunpowder, and not because I thought the combination was a pleasing one. It’s spicy, so yay for dragons this time, but not overpoweringly so. It would take a lot to overpower this base tea, though!
There’s a generous amount of cinnamon, which I can appreciate, but I can’t taste the Tiger Eye at all. In hindsight, that’s probably a good thing – I’m not sure caramel would have helped here, and possibly it would have been a step too far.
This one was okay, but I don’t think it was the greatest combination and I didn’t like it much personally. Having said that, it was probably the spiciest of all the blends from the sampler, and that’s what I’ve been looking for all along. Perhaps I’m just hard to please?!
