Blackberry and Lime Turnover

Sipdown (288)

I reached for any tea in my single serving/Sipdown box and pulled out this. It’s a nice tea and I’m thankful to Evol Ving Ness who was kind enough to share it with me.

The cup has cooled down completely before I got to drinking it, which was a surprise but it’s still nice. The smell of blackberry hits your nose first, then I’m getting a lot of the green tea base that tapers off into a lime flavor. 52 Teas has such a great blackberry flavor and I’m not getting that here as much as I’d like but it could be age so I won’t hold that against it.

Massively oversteeped this, as in, I watched an entire episode of Grey’s Anatomy before I realized I’d forgotten to remove the infuser. It took it well, though, just a bit bitter and that could also be from overleafing a tad. I am a fan of this one, although it could use more blackberry, in my opinion. It’s definitely more lime-heavy, which is particularly noticeable as I had a lemon-lime tea from 52teas yesterday. Not really picking up any pastry, but the oversteep is probably masking any subtleties.

I continued drinking this throughout the day after my first two cups. My third and fourth and fifth cups were a bit of berry, a bit of lime, and a bit of cream: all in all, in pretty good balance with a nice base. Thankfully, they lacked the odd mildewiness of the first cup. Possibly that first cup had had more lime rind than necessary in the dry leaf in my spoon. Either that, or the odd peculiar bite is something one has to get used to. The pastry aspect continued to be absent.

Sipdown (134)!

Thank you Kittenna for including samples of this and many other new 52Teas blends in the package you dropped off New Year’s Eve! I can’t say this is one I ever really pondered ordering for myself; mostly because of the base tea. Though, I do quite like the pairing of blackberry and lime – it’s one that Butiki did with a guayusa base and I found it really enjoyable!

This cold brew was delicious though; it had a smooth, well rounded and clean taste that stuck a perfect balance between the blackberry and lime flavourings! It was juicy and fresh with both fruit components clearly identifiable (at least imo). I don’t know if I’d call them super natural tasting per say as there was a level of sweetness I think is just slightly excessive to the natural sweetness of the fruits but this certainly didn’t read as chemical or overly artificial to me. The lime was also a slight bit creamy, like Della Terra’s creamy Lime Chiffon? Maybe that’s the ‘turnover’ element of the tea which I felt was otherwise missing? The base also does a really lovely job supporting the citrus (lime) notes too without either masking them or being masked itself; green and citrus is always a good choice, tbh.

I like this a lot! I’d call it a winner.

This was one of five in my November box- a very ordinary selection that included the scourge of boring winter tagalongs, apple goddamned spice. I’d prefer a million iterations of pumpkin (also included) over another apple spice, but that’s neither here nor there.

Regardless, this seemed like a more exciting flavor- it wasn’t marshmallow krispy matcha, peanut butter toast, or boo-berry cotton candy, but it looked decent and has large whole pieces of dried, reconstituted blackberry. Very fresh! The flavor leaves lots to the imagination, though, as it succeeds as a blackberry and lime tea- more on the citrus-heavy, aggressively clean, acidic scent versus murky, dark berry flavors, but fails to deliver as a twee turnover or dessert tea. I say this having experienced and enjoyed teas that have been solid dessert homages rather than mere implications and feel that 52teas can do better both in selection, curation, and iteration.