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I’m actually really enjoying this one this morning.

When you bust open this package, lemme tell you, this tea smells delicious. I kept inhaling. There are some cocoa notes overlaid with honey smells, and a dash of a floral component as well. It smells three-dimensional and it beckons you out of that awful stupor upon waking up.

And the dry leaves themselves? People have mentioned this before, but they’re absolutely adorable! Very wiry with golden and brown hues. So pretty! Little curls, some in almost an eyelash shape. So I put a tsp. of this in my IngenuiTEA (which I just marked with a Sharpie in increments for 6 oz. and 8 oz., so I feel pretty special) and watched it steep up. I figured that the leaves wouldn’t do much and… they didn’t. Just sort of floated around.

The wet leaves smell more like a regular black tea with some honey blended in. And the infusion smells just as good as the dry leaves. The cocoa is a bit subdued, but the honey and floral scents are still there. Now, I’ve never had lotus or sandalwood anywhere near me, so I can’t speak from experience of those two scents/flavors. But I’ll try and explain how it tastes.

It’s fairly light with a bit of spice. I’m not getting any bitterness, but many floral and honey components, melted into a traditional “default” tea taste. This almost tastes similar to the Keemun Imperial I had by SpecialTeas the other day, if you tripped out the smokiness and added floral/honey components instead. At points I’m thinking this is full-bodied; at other points, it feels a bit watery. My cup doesn’t really have any astringency; Ancient Emerald Lily had much, much more than this. There’s a subtle sweetness underneath it as well, and some spicy qualities. I can’t pinpoint what spices, exactly, but it’s that feeling of warmth that comes from some of the more comforting spices out there.

Overall, really enjoying this cup. I’d rate it higher, but I don’t think the flavor profiles and components are really going to stick in my mind. It’s like that one acquaintance that you have that always remembers your name. They come up to you and say, “Hi, teaplz!” And then you feel awkward because you can’t for the life of you remember theirs. So you stand there and go, “Hi…. hi.”

And then the rest of the night you’re trying to deduce their name. You’re eavesdropping on their conversations with other people just on the sheer chance that someone might say their name. And if someone does, you’ll remember it that night. But after that night, it’ll be gone. That’s sort of this tea. I bet two weeks from now, I’ll probably forget I even tasted it.