Currently sipping on this one…
It was one of the teas that Stephenia had mentioned in her all time favourite teas video on Youtube, and was also really highly recommended by a couple other instagram tea blogger folks so I decided to pick some up for myself and give it a whirl; I do like a good sweet tea, and cotton candy is one of those flavours that rides the balance between generic sweetness and a distinct type of flavour quite finely so I was excited to see what this would be like!
It smelled much different than I expected – certainly sweet and sugary, with an air of “cotton candy” to that sweetness but also much more fruity than I would have ever expected it to be – like a tart raspberry kind of fruity quality!?
Steeped up it’s… Well… Hmmm…
I honestly don’t know what I think of this. There’s something to it that does remind me of cotton candy; this sweet spun sugar type of flavour in the immediate top notes and then that gingerly sticks in the mouth after swallowing. However, it’s also very fruity in the same way I was getting from the dry leaf aroma – like a more tart raspberry with a generically sweet apple note, and the raspberry lingers in the finish along with that cotton candy type flavour though it has more of a staying power and I’m finding that sharpness is really strong in the back of my mouth. It’s not bad tasting – but to me, at least, it’s not cotton candy and it definitely feels out of place. It also has that same kind of cosmetic fruit type flavour (like you get in lip stick or lip gloss, sometimes) that I find DT’s Dragonfruit Aloe blend has…
It’s not that I don’t think a cotton candy can’t have a fruit/berry note to it like this; in fact the pastel pink/blue cotton candy you often see is typically berry flavoured. It’s just that I think those cotton candy flavours are typically much more light/airy and not nearly as dense and tart as what I’m experiencing here.
Is it good? Yeah! Is it Cotton Candy? I’m on the fence…
