Throat Therapy

By the time I actually make it to the doc tomorrow, I’m sure I’ll be told, “it’s just a virus and you’re almost over it,” but after six days of irritated throat, I actually voluntarily tried a sample cup of something that actually lists licorice as the primary ingredient in the hopes that it performs as expected.

Because of the medicinal ingredient lineup, it’s sweet and slimy (thank you, slippery elm), but the orange and cinnamon in the inactive ingredient lineup cut the sweetness enough to make it drinkable. Therapeutic value? Plausible, although any tea with a spicy profile is probably just as comforting.

Sipdown (1913)!

I felt very ill on Friday so I didn’t really get a lot of tea drinking done. Mostly I focused on making sure my day working from home was really comfortable, and then after finishing work just resting. However, since my throat was very raw I did have a couple teas that were a little more soothing. By happy chance, this was included with my recent Adagio order as a free sample, so I steeped it up.

I’ll be honest, I had a hard time tasting anything other than licorice root and cinnamon. The cinnamon was nice and comforting. The licorice root, though? Ugh. Just awful. To be totally fair to Adagio though, I hate licorice root in general so this was never going to be a blend that worked for me. On top of that, it’s just silly to complain about the licorice root because it’s literally the foundation for the whole blend. Like, licorice root and the fact it’s a demulcent and expectorant are why this blend is soothing and helpful for sore throats.

And it was soothing and helpful. I felt better after finishing the mug. I just also did not like the taste – and that’s okay. In this case, function trumped flavour.

It tasted better than I expected. I’m not sure if it was this tea that took the edge off my sore throat or some other aspect, like the fact that the water was hot, or the honey I added, so I have nothing to say about that. But it is comforting. It’s tasty enough that I kind of want to buy the box of tea bags to just have as an option. For whatever reason licorice and spice are flavors I crave when I am sick. Also mint and ginger, but those are for another review.

The brewing parameters I used were not scientific. Put what appears to be a teaspoon in a tea bag. Pour boiling water. Wait a few minutes or until the tea is cool enough to drink, but still hot. I got 2 infusions out of it.