75 Tasting Notes
This is very tasty. My second unusual T2 tea – my first was White White Cocoa, which is a white tea with chocolate, whereas this is an oolong with nougat. I would associate both of those things with black tea, and probably drink them with sugar and probably a bit of milk. I never add either to whites or oolongs, so it makes for a much more gently sweet flavour, with no fear of bitterness. This one is very very tasty. Like White White Cocoa, it’s desserty but in a more subtle, softer way. I thoroughly approve.
This tea reminds me quite a bit of how I remember The Des Riads (also Dammann) tasting. I do seem to remember Riads being more sweet, whereas this one… funnily enough, reminds me of grapefruit, which it doesn’t contain, whereas Riads does. I think what it actually is is the lime and coconut combination.
I don’t usually go for coconut in my green teas – I find that it tastes very different from my idea of coconut, and not in a way I like. But this one seems to do that green coconut thing better than other teas I’ve tried (e.g. the Dutch one from TeaBar whose name I now can’t remember for the life of me). There’s also definitely a background of spices, though I don’t recognize any particular spice. It’s more like a subtle bitter quality that isn’t actually bitter. If that makes any sense.
As for the mango, I don’t think I taste it specifically, but there may be a bit of very subtle sweetness that comes from it. It’s funny, this tea. I feel like it has this very complex but not very strong flavour. It has shades of sour, bitter, and sweet, without actually being any of those. But I also feel like it doesn’t really taste very strongly of anything ‘real’. Then again, I’m not this tea’s target audience – which is why I only asked for 1/3 of a bag when a friend of mine was ordering it for herself.
I’ll play around with brewing methods, though, and see what happens. Also I think I’ll have to do a side-by-side comparison with Riads (which I am quite fond of).
This is a lovely, very lychee-y tea. Never mind that it’s in teabags, it’s pretty perfect. And amazing for bubble tea, if you manage to work out the darn bubbles… or you can just skip the bubbles and make it with sugar syrup and lots of milk and leave it to cool. Yum yum yum. It’s also lovely as is, hot, no sugar or anything else. All in a all, really nice. Plus great name and great box, which I always appreciate.
It’s not my favourite bagged milk&sugar tea, but it’s pretty much around no.3 (after Taylors Irish Breakfast and Yorkshire tea). It’s mostly because it’s more on the bitter side of things, without actually being bitter. It just tastes a bit more strong or something, so I only have it when I’m in a mood for that. But it’s lovely and it reminds me of Ireland, because I was staying in an Irish cottage with my fella one time and we bought a big box of Barry’s tea and just drank that the whole week. The first time I had this tea again after Ireland I just got a woooosh of Ireland memories come back to me – very Balzac. Unfortunately, that has since gone away, but a lovely tea nonetheless.
Preparation
I love this tea. I picked it up at Whole Foods because I couldn’t find a normal box of either Barry’s Irish Breakfast or Twinings Irish Breakfast anywhere (apparently Twinnings only does Irish Breakfast for the international market. You can buy it in their shop, but it’s a big box and costs 5 quid, and I didn’t really feel like paying it at this point). Anyway, it’s a lovely lovely Irish breakfast. I pretty much drink this every morning now. I also love Taylors Yorkshire Tea (my previous preferred morning tea), so – go Taylors! Plus they’re from Yorkshire and I kind of have a crush on Yorkshire.
Preparation
I love this tea. It’s a lovely and unusual herbal tea. It has quite a few ingredients, a number of which are pretty unusual (catnip?), so I have no idea what it is that comes out in the flavour, but it manages to be both perfectly soothing and also somehow… almost spicey, but not in a traditional sense. In any case, it’s lovely. Also, I loooove the picture on the box. Plus the name is cute. I pretty much try to have this one in my tea cupboard at all times.
This was my boyfriend’s favourite morning tea/bagged tea. I can’t seem to find Lipton’s in London, so I now buy the Lemon Grey from Twinings, which has a similar thing going on. A very nice teabag. I find that Earl Greys do pretty well in teabag form, they don’t seem to be overly demanding.
Pretty nice chai. Nothing very unusual, but there’s a nice balance of spices and it doesn’t lean too much towards ginger or pepper, like some of these things do, and there’s no anise. I find that anise has a tendency to grab all the attention in a chai, and I’m not a huge fan of it as it is. So, yeah, a simple, nice tea.
