Strawberry Bon Bon

TTB #2

First tea of the day from the TTB! I enjoyed this one. It’s not as complex as most of the other blends I’ve tried from 52Teas…just a basic sweet strawberry flavor on a light, smooth black tea base. But the flavoring and base tea are well-balanced and quite tasty! I can also see this being yummy as a tea latte…adding milk would probably give more of a “strawberries and cream” flavor. There’s enough left for a couple more cups and I may end up hanging onto this one!

From TTB 2019/2020.

Reading the description, this one is supposed to be more like the little strawberry candies than the fruit itself. I can smell that in the dry blend, but it gets lost for me after steeping. I do taste a tartness and a general berry flavor, but I wouldn’t associate it with strawberries or strawberry candy if I didn’t know the name or description of the tea.

This arrived in my mystery grab bag, and I was very excited to try it. Sad to say the strawberry flavor was no where to be seen.

You know, I think this frequent ordering from 52teas is going to break the bank. However, the blends they make are just so darn tasty I don’t know what else to do.

Today’s contestant is Strawberry Bon Bon. Fun fact: she actually included a genuine strawberry candy in the package. Just like my grandma used to carry with her all the time. Pity I have to wait till my sugar tanks before I can eat it :( Anyway, smell in package is very strongly strawberry. But it’s like a candied strawberry, which I believe is what she was going for.
Brewed western style, 3.3 grams leaf to 16oz water, brewed 3 min at 212F.

Taste plain is… wow that’s remarkably strawberry. I am totally getting a sweet strawberry flavor, but unfortunately the black tea base is making a conflicting bitter flavor. Welp, time for the traditional “Single Splenda Treatment”… MMMMM Much better. I have really found that the 52 teas blends require at least a single splenda per cup to balance out the flavors. I don’t really mind that, as long as I have splenda on hand I’m golden.

The strawberry is very prominent here. I actually like the strawberry here better than the other strawberry tea I have, Adagio Strawberry. It is sweet, but also a teensy bit tart. Just enough to be refreshing. With the added sweetener, the bitterness from the black tea base isn’t noticible at all, and instead the two play well together. I really do enjoy this one. Highly recommend. If you like strawberry, go get some of this. It’s mighty yummy.

This is the Tea of the Week for January 7, 2019. The theme for this month is “Retro Candy Shop” – inspired by old fashioned candies (mostly British Candies but also one of my favorites from my childhood). This is the one from my childhood favorites. Remember those little strawberry candies – the hard candies that were wrapped in the shiny strawberry wrapper? This tea was inspired by those candies.

It has a really nice strawberry flavor – and the lighter base of Ceylon and Nilgiri allow the strawberry to shine through. It’s a little sweeter than true-to-the-fruit (because, you know, it’s a candy-like version) but certainly not as sweet as the candy – the tea cuts through that a bit.

I’m happy with how this one turned out. (Oh – and the boxes are going out over the course of the next three days!)