Zabar's

This has been forgotten for a while. The boyfriend’s sister bought a huge amount, I’m sure she would be shocked if she realised that I never by that much in one go myself. At least not of the same sort. Unless they are confirmed Standards.

However, it’s a shame that it’s been neglected so because surprisingly for a florally scented tea, it’s actually really nice. I even found myself going specifically for it without first dithering about which tea to choose once I had remembered it.

I don’t know… Maybe I’m developing more of a taste for floral stuff too? I seem to recall having had something or other else floral recently, only now I can’t recall what it was.

Anyway, we ought to drink this more often. I think we should make it an afternoon stable for a while, maybe. But oh, then there are a number of other oolongs as well that… oh gosh, now it’s getting complicated! Maybe I should just stick to the black in the morning habit for now.

Now, this is more my style. It’s the other one of the two the boyfriend’s sister bought for me.

Except… well, I’m not much of a floral fan either, but if it’s done right I’ll drink. If it’s done right, I’ll even enjoy it. It’s just not my own first choice for myself.

We tried out a pot of it on sunday, but I had made it a wee bit too strong then, so I couldn’t really tell what I thought of it.

The aroma of the leaves is quite floral, but it’s been my experience that this is the norm for jasmine stuff, so I didn’t find that too alarming. After steeping it’s actually even quite nice.

See, the jasmine scented teas I’ve had in the past have generally been green teas and then I found the floral aspect to be a bit too much in the forefront. Here, we have an oolong. Green type oolong, but just the small amount of fermentation it’s had is enough to complement the jasmine and put a wee bit of a dampener on it.

Yes, I definitely prefer jasmine scented oolong to jasmine scented green! The oolong is a heavier flavoured base for it and it takes a lot of that soap-y perfume-y dusty sort of unpleasantness out of it for me.

The other tea the boyfriend’s sister bought for me was totally not to my taste, and although this wasn’t something I would have picked for myself, it’s defintiely making up for that berry concoction. Very nice.

My boyfriend’s sister went to New York on holiday in the autumn last year, and she bought two teas for me from Zabar’s on Broadway. Nothing else of this brand existed on Steepster and I looked Zabar’s website up, but couldn’t find any of these two that she bought me. I think maybe they’re re-branded or something. The website looks like it’s some sort of department store or something? Perhaps New Yorkers among my Steepsterites could enlighten me here.

Anyway, this particular one just says ‘loose tea’ on the bag and apart from an educated guess about berries, I have no clue what’s in it. It doesn’t look like there is actual tea in it, but there are single bits here and there that look like they might be tea leaves. Other than that I can see dried berries and plenty of orange peel and there’s a spicy aroma to it. It’s a christmas-y smell. Cinnamon, I think. Perhaps cloves. definitely ginger.

I can’t, however, immediately see any red flowers.

This gives me chai thoughts. I’m trying it out now with a normal steep and depending on how that goes, I might try and do it stovetop later on.

I have to say, I’m not generally a fan of things like this, so I’m feeling pretty sceptical and trying to work out how to tell the boyfriend’s sister that I didn’t like her gift. (At least I’ve tried the other one she bought me, although I haven’t posted about it yet, and that one seemed quite nice)

On pouring it’s very suspiciously pink. Oh no. Please just be the dried berries!

The aroma is very spicy now. There’s definitely cloves in this, I think.

Okay, here goes.

grimace

Okay, it wasn’t colour from dried berries. Hibiscus on its own is bad enough. Spiced up hibiscus is not an improvement. Nothing wrecks a blend as completely as hibiscus does.
I can’t even taste any single one of the other elements in this stuff. Not becuase they aren’t there or the hibiscus is particularly overwhelming. I don’t know if it is. It’s just that I dislike hibiscus enough to be unable to disregard it when it’s there.

I can’t drink this. It’s free to a good home.