I found this teabag in my stash at work. (I’m back in the office for the first time today but I’m not sure I’m going to last the whole day. Still coughing and sore throat-y.)
Steeping at work is always imperfect because the water is kind of take it or leave it, and it comes out of the spigot quite hot. So I try to limit myself to teas that can take really hot water.
I should mention that I’m not a huge sweet potato fan. I really like the fries they do at The Counter, and I will eat a baked sweet potato during the appropriate season, but I’ve never been much for the mashed potato with pineapple thing my BF likes to make for Thanksgiving. I can’t now recall whether I’ve had sweet potato pie. I must have, but I probably thought it was pumpkin.
The little mesh bag had little white dots in it that I assume are the marshmallows, and fine grains of tea managed to escape onto my fingers as I held it to my nose. Wow, what a strange smell to the dry leaf. Definitely potato, but it seemed to me to waffle between sweet potato and white potato. There was also some weird strong scent that I see Auggy has identified as whisky. Yeah, that could be it.
The tea was a really lovely clear reddish brown but the aroma of the steeped tea was bakey bakey bakey and not in a way that appealed to me. The flavor, though, was surprisingly quite good. On the front of the sip, there’s a mild tea flavor, but there’s something sweet and lightly spiced that’s pie-like evident toward the end of the sip and in the aftertaste. The little marshmallows also add sparks of sweetness that pop every now and then in the mouth.
I think this is quite well done. It’s not something I would buy, but mainly because sweet potato flavor is not in my top ten or probably even 20 list. I could see how it would appeal to fans, though.
