Currant Affair

Onto caffeine free teas for the evening. I forget how nice this rooibos is until I have it again lol, very fruity and a touch of cream. The red rooibos is a good base as it adds to the rich currant flavor. A nice evening tea. See previous notes.

Backlog: OMGsrsly introduced me to the awesomeness of blackcurrants last spring. Those things smell. So. Good.

The aroma of this rooibos blend is up to par, but the flavour isn’t quite as sweet and I can detect some of the base. Adding some agave syrup helped bring out the fruitiness a tad more, however. Not bad!

I wasn’t planning on picking this up yesterday; all I wanted was 30g more of Mother’s Little Helper. (Un)fortunately, My friend who works there sneakily suggested this. Having no willpower to speak of, this led to 10g more of tea than originally planned.

Also, on an almost completely unrelated note, I had a Caramel Pumpkin Cheesecake qoola (frozen yogurt) yesterday, and it was so amazing that I felt the need to share the experience here. Currently missing a certain 52teas blend.

Wow. I LOVE black currant flavoured things and have asked Davids off and on for over a year to make a good black currant tea. When cocoberry came out I was excited and then horrendously disappointed. When I contacted customer service to share my belief that cocoberry was an abomination they consoled me with the promise of currant affair. With that in mind, I bought a 50 gram bag on faith that a tea with so few ingredients couldn’t possibly go wrong.

For once, I was very right. I steeped this 5 minutes with a hefty amount of leaf and while hot this was a beautiful currant tea with just the right level of sweetness. Unfortunately it become overwhelmingly sweet as the cup cooled BUT I think that was a factor of over-leaf and over-time. This is one that doesn’t need a lot of time or leaf to become a really powerful brew. Others may like the cooler cup best but as someone who doesn’t sweeten her teas, it is a bit much.

In general though, I love this. I am already considering getting more to have an at home and at work stash. I did have a few coworkers complaining of a weird smell though so I might have to take the work stash home. :( Two thumbs up for a currant tea done right!

Too bad that VariaTEA didn’t like this, but I’m happy she gave it to me. I don’t mind mediciny-rooibos’ flavours.

And I’m happy that we made it through all the Black Friday/Cyber Monday madness. Our discussion boards should calm down soon! Well, aside from the “What I Got in the Mail” thread, but that’ll be an exciting one to watch, and also it’s easy to ignore if I’ve got too much going on.

I love currant candies. This tea approximates the flavour.

Not something to keep stocked all the time, but nice to have once in a while, I think.

I added a little sugar.

(245)

Dry Leaf Nose: Sweet black currants

Liquor: A sweet black currant aroma resides in this red-brown liquor.

Flavour: Freshly picked ripe black currents. Sweet, rich, dark and fruity with.

I received this in a swap with LovelyLotus.

This one was on my low priority shopping list because I love currants but I also have a couple currant teas already so I wasn’t entirely sure if I could justify buying another one, so getting it in a swap was perfect!

Dry, the leaf smells similar to Champagne Cassis from Tea Desire which is a personal favourite (I have it ranked 100, and it’d probably be in my 5 favourites teas of all time) – but a little less sweet. For preparing it today, I steeped 2 tsp. in my 12 oz. timolino in boiling water for eight minutes. I didn’t have the brewing guide/suggestions pulled up so I just went with something that seemed reasonable in comparison to my other rooibos blends from DAVIDsTEA.

The smell of this one is intensly black currant and cherry (what the heck? is there even cherry in the blend?) – but in a HEAVILY medicinal way, which does not bode well for this tea…

I was kind of hesitant to try it out, and thankfully I was busy enough working the first two hours (of my three hour) shift so I could put it off. However, I’m finally trying it now and, to be honest, my thoughts are simply “yuck”. I’m getting incredibly strong notes of cherry and black currant in a strongly and overpoweringly medicinal way that leaves a very unpleasant and lingering aftertaste in my mouth. This is just rude :/

And that’s actually really disappointing because I LOVE currants and was hoping for this to be a caffeine free equivalent to Champagne Cassis – and it’s definitely not. Boo :(

Anyway, I’m still thankful to LovelyLotus for sending some my way – if nothing else this satisfied my curiosity and prevented me from actually spending money on it. I think this is getting dumped when I get home, though (sad because I only brought one thing of tea to work today because my shift was so short)…

This is yet another tea I poured out. Though the dry leaf smelled sweet and delicious, the finished product tasted more medicinal than anything. Into the swap box!

I picked up a 50g bag of Currant Affair while at DAVIDs’ Moncton, New Brunswick location this past weekend. I had asked one of the employees for a suggestion and this is what she recommended as it was this month’s Tea of the Month. I noticed this past weekend that I have a thing for asking employees to randomly choose something for me (MAC – “Pick out an eyeshadow that you feel would compliment my eyes”, Every Sushi Restaurant – “And just add in an order of whichever roll you like the best”, DAVIDs – “I’ll also have 50g of any random tea you wanna recommend”). I always seem to have good luck with the employees I encounter. I guess the fact that I’m pretty easygoing and will consume anything helps.

Oh right, the tea…

I don’t believe I’ve ever tried currants before, so I can’t compare this tea to actual currants, but I really do enjoy this tea’s flavor. I did; however, find that it’s smell and taste vaguely reminded me of some sort of cough syrup or throat lozenge. This has actually been the second tea to remind me of medicine (without the medicine taste luckily).

I’ve only steeped two cups of this tea so far (consecutively) and that was a few days ago. I’m also writing this review by memory, as opposed to using my handwritten notes…so I’ll give this another go shortly and reassess. I know I did thoroughly enjoy this tea and as far as I can recall, would recommend it.

I finally went to the DT in my town & as soon as I stepped in, the woman at the counter was all, “I have a sample for you!” and it was this. I was sold. Like, immediately. This’ll be my go-to decaf for a while. It makes me wish I had more Blueberry Jam! I miss that tea.