I got this tea as a free sample with my Soleil order and all I can say is AAAHHH! Okay, just kidding, I’m a little more eloquent than that.
This tea has lovely leaves with distinctly gold tips and steeps up to a rich, deep reddish-gold color that I would call auburn except that would sound weird because we’re talking about tea, not hair.
When tasted, it has a teeny bit more astringency than I prefer, but that just adds to the complexity of the flavor. Each sip offers a succession of pleasant notes in different areas of the mouth. For example, I tasted a squash/sweet potato-type flavor (as advertised) around the middle of the mouth, and I detected the chocolate notes nearer the end of the sip at the back of the mouth. The smoke flavor is hardly there at all; this tea doesn’t taste “smoked” as such at all. Which is exactly what I was hoping for. The last Lapsang Souchong I tried was basically liquid smoke, which I’ve never had the inclination to chug.
And another thing I loved was that the flavors I found actually in the tea matched up with the product description, which doesn’t always happen (whether because the descriptions are too fanciful or because I’m just not good at tasting tea flavors). The tea is a wonderful consistency, too.
So anyway, this tea is excellent and I’m positive I’ll be buying it again ( sometime when I can afford more tea, lol).
