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I broke into this black tea and swore it was going to be another berry or dark fruit monster. I don’t mean monster like The a l’opera, that’s strawberry shortcake on crack and I mean that in the best of all possible ways. Vivaldi has the aura of something so sinfully familiar to one who loves to bake or craft personal creme brulees.
There is a section in my cupboard of goodies devoted to the various forms of vanilla and to open this said cabinet is a delight. I honestly can’t say I can tell all the differences between my vanilla but I know what I use each of them in.

Vivaldi is a voluptuous bourbon vanilla in the strictest of senses. She is loud verging on fruit but soothing, dark and tempting… If Dita VonTesse was a tea, I might say this was her. This is not a tea I would share excepting with the “boyfriend who would draw me a bath on a bad day!”

I will place this tea in my “waiting for my prince to come” category, which includes the sappy chick-flick night.

I love the color of this tea. I like to drink this on the ship but tend to forget to take the little baggies out of my cup. It has that wonderful matcha scent and taste until it turns bitter. This is my first and only experience with matcha and I am sure it is an insult to matcha purists. LOL When I lived in San Francisco I would eat green tea ice cream and this tea reminds me how much I miss it. :) So I am off to get an ice cream maker!

Tried this strawberry scented green tea again today, my second steep, and carefully watched the minutes tick by.

The liquid is a lovely light green tinted liquid. Where I thought yesterdays loud candy coated scent had faded, it returned but in a subtler fashion. The tea in and of itself is pleasant. It isn’t a mouth full of berries despite its fragrance. I expect Crunch berries but find a refined delicate green. And yes, if you watch the clock the bitterness is non existent! LOL Lesson learned.

And today, I did find the perfect place for this tea. I had taken my truck up to Mt Baker and followed a gravel road along the Sauk River. I can only assume they are still logging the area because the smell of a trampled and cut wood was everywhere. It was sad, hauntingly beautiful and empty… I had the old road, rivers and woods to myself. Poor Grumble took a beating (and he, my truck, just got a new paint job :( ) but despite this mini pitfall I found the view required a gentle cup of strawberry scent green tea. It was but for a moment but I could and should have been sipping it silently there resting in thought on a felled tree resting on the river bank watching the sun scoot across the cradling snow entombed mountains.

Not a favorite but well worth a try… on a back road, sitting on a tree, listening to nature and alive in thought.

Mariage Freres has made up for their Lipton-eques blunder with this one. Having not yet tried Marco Polo I can only image this tea to follow in the same vein. It is berry berry Berry smelling. Like something akin to Smuckers strawberry filling or jam.

As a kid there was a breakfast treat that came with a packet of strawberry jam. You could use it to decorate whatever it was it came with… I think is was a pop-tart or something similar. This is spot on.

Out of the bag it is strawberry shortcake’s best friend but when steeped becomes buttery and almost hints at its pound cake or angel food beginnings. So far, I am in love. However I don’t know when I would especially crave this tea but I will get back to you while on deployment on that. I can see this sweet berry tea as having great annoyance properties that could come in handy. Perfume free office spaces be warned with this brew!

Oh and since this is a green tea, go easy on the brewing time less it provide you with a karate chop to the palate. For all the berry in the world can’t hide a bitterly neglected (western brewed) tea. :)

Love this tea. So glad I found it here. :)

This darling sprang forth from the bag smelling of summer fruits kissed by the sun, dried and cradled by black tea.
Brewing it brought about more of the same. The flowers were a charming addition but this tea smells very much of pulp. Not berries or rich red fruits nor was it the hiss of dried orange. This sings of the sun and the former life of a stone fruit. I am reminded of peach or apricot and their golden flesh… more so that area of change where it turns red as it kisses the stone. The brew if fair in the way of black tea and perhaps I didn’t nab enough leaves. It is of a nice taste and I think this blend would be perfect iced with peaches on a summer day.
It’s lovely… cheery… I will have to remember this brew when the sun shines again. It screams summer… and is very enjoyable plain. I think my grandfather would have liked this tea.

Honestly, in my re-drinking of this tea… it tastes like an over priced Lipton. Nice… pleasant and safe. Tee-hee and ho-hum.

Well I regret to say that I was a bit scared to try this tea. Aged… Mold… next I’ll be licking my shower curtain!

But I did it, finally, and if the tea could rate me I would get half a star for trying it cold. I was on the phone with my mother and that’s my excuse.

What did I think of it? It’s dark… like WOW dark and the taste was hard to place. Is that malty? I hear malt and think beer or Whoppers candy. This was that taste you find at the end of a bowl of cereal, sort of. While its appearance was on the verge of midnight the taste was pleasing, smooth, and the perfect metaphorical almond.
It took me a while to place it, what it was that it reminded me of but it was every memory of an almond. (Growing up my family used to knock, de-husk and hull almonds. Sometimes I even miss the fuzz and pain of prising the little buggers from their homes.) The smooth texture of the drink was akin to the soft white flesh of an almond and as dark as the drink was all I could picture was perfect creamy white. The scent while hinting at its autumn leaves past was actually closer in memory composition to the smell of the blanched skins of almonds still warm and wet but lacking any form of bitterness that can sometimes be found there.
And yes, probably just like you, I am at a loss as to how one tea could return so many memories of an almond and have little to nothing to do with it than say a scented/flavored almond tea would. The memory… go figure?