Butiki Sample sipdown! Normally I’d try to sort of prolong having my samples – but right now I feel rushed to chug back (but not really – I want to enjoy the cup) as many of my new teas as possible so I can determine what I want to order larger quantities of in my Black Friday orders (I’m limiting myself to a Della Terra and a Butiki order, even though I’d love to be placing orders with other companies too).
Earlier today I had Grape Oolong, and while it was good it was a miss in terms of “OH MY GOD I NEED TO HAVE YOU STOCKED ALWAYS”. This is one that I picked a sample of in my last order, mostly because I have a fair amount of teas with almonds in them (I love almonds) so I wanted to more so focus on trying teas that I didn’t have similar(ish) counterparts to.
Dry, I couldn’t really smell anything. If I stuck my nose straight in the bag and took a big whiff (I may have inhaled some tea – not gonna lie) I SORTA got cinnamon and very faint almond, but that’s kinda a stretch to say.
For preparation, I stuck to the info. on my prepackaged sample: pre measured sample size in 8 oz. of boiling water for 4 min. (admittedly I think this was closer to five, though). In the aroma, I’m getting notes of black tea (yum), a light cinnamon sort of like powdered cinnamon sugar, and almonds.
I know I’m going to fail at explaining this – but I always loved almonds growing up (especially in baking) because strongly concentrated almonds didn’t taste the same as regular almonds to me. When my mom baked around Christmas time she’s make almond cookies with almond extract and I used to sit at the table where she was mixing things, with the bottle clutched in my grubby little hands sniffing at it. I used to say the smell reminded me of sweet candied cherries (like marachinos) but I know now that’s not what the smell was. Still, it’s very distinct to me and separate from an almond you’d eat straight (those are still good too). I’ve been skimming other people’s reviews to see if someone else has figured out the words for the flavour I want to describe, but no luck.
Anyway, that’s what I’m hoping this will taste like: Mom’s almond cookies with that indescribable almond extract sweetness.
First few sips… It’s good, but I’m not really totally blown away. Maybe that’s because there’s a little bit of astringency here that I really wasn’t expecting at all: but that’s probably my fault for nearly letting this steep way longer than the 4 recommended minutes (I have that problem of setting things up to steep and then getting distracted and losing sight of the clock). My tongue feels kind of peppered with cinnamon and there is a cookieness to this tea.
If I let the liquor sit in my mouth for a while I start to really pick up on the almond sweetness and I ALMOST get the flavour I’m looking for – but sadly this is a bit more “actual almond” nutty and less “almond extract” sweet. Again, apologies for the wording but I really am having issues figuring out how to say what I’m thinking of/looking for.
I think I probably can get away with not adding this into my Black Friday order without being heartbroken. Really, this isn’t a bad tea by a long shot – it’s just not something I’m in love with. I think that’s probably because I was expecting different and had built up my expectation to a point where anything else would be next to impossible to live up to it. Because of that, I am grateful I just got this as a sample and didn’t go for 1 oz. size…
Anyway, because of all that I’m not gonna rate this because I feel like it wouldn’t be fair to the tea or to Stacy.
This is one of the teas that we are reworking. We will definitely be upgrading the base tea. :)