Sipdown (310)!
I was happy to see this was the freebie sample tossed into my last order because I’ve been on the fence about ordering it with essentially every AQ2T order I’ve ever placed…
My mom and I disagree about the dry leaf aroma of this one: personally, I didn’t really smell the cherry and only picked up on the cream, which reminded me of the smell of heavy whipping cream with more sweetness. My mom instantly went to maraschino cherries…
I steeped this one up in a small teacup since the sample was a very small size; I also ended up resteeping it twice because I struggled to put my finger on exactly how I felt about it just off the first steep alone. Interestingly, the first two infusions tasted identical with ZERO flavour deterioration and the third was only marginally weaker in flavour.
I think that overall this one can be summed up as very accurate to the name, but probably just not the right tea for me personally. The cherry note is REALLY intense though; and it definitely reminds me strongly of black cherries, specifically those really fancy/expensive black cherries that get made into maraschino cherries for fancy/expensive mixed drinks/cocktails in mixology bars. Fuck the bright, firetruck red ones: this is the ‘elegant’ shit. And you know what? If that was all that the cherry tasted like I think I’d be fine with that but it’s a little artificial and that slight artificial quality just opens it up into falling into the trap so much cherry flavoured stuff falls into: it takes on a bit of a medicinal quality.
It’s not overpowering or just blatant, straight up medicinal but it IS there.
Lets talk about the cream though – ‘cause that was the best part for me. I like creamy teas a lot, but anything that’s cream flavoured artificially tends to rub me the wrong way a little bit. I’m just very particular about cream flavoured teas in general, it seems. And in this teas defense, it’s not artificial cream flavour – it’s natural. However, it’s flavourings regardless…
But the cream was great! It reminded me a lot of really heavy whipped cream; the kind of stuff I used to pile on breakfast pancakes/waffles in literal mounds. The good shit. The handwhipped shit – not Cool Whip or spray whipped cream nonsense. I was SO into this flavour element of the tea, and if there was more of it I think the degree to which I liked it would probably outweigh the parts of the cherry flavour that I didn’t like.
I’m really, really glad I tried it though! The curiosity probably would have eventually ate me alive if I hadn’t gotten this one as a sample – but while there are some REALLY good elements to this one, it’s just not for me overall. I can totally see why other people would be all over this one, though! I think the flavours line up perfectly with the name, and that can be a really rare thing to find in a tea…
