Red Sunset

Thank you to Azzrian for sending me a very generous amount of this tea! I thought for sure I had tried it before … but I checked all my reviews and I couldn’t find it anywhere… so, if I had tried it, I didn’t record it! But I’m glad to be trying it now!

This is really quite unexpected. It is extraordinarily aromatic, very strongly ROSE but, when combined with the fruit essence, it becomes quite a different rose scent, that is to say, not rose in the possibly expected Rose Congou type of scent. It still smells like rose … but it smells a bit like fruit that has been doused with rose water. Very fragrant, and quite nice, really. Another way to describe it might be to say it’s a bit like sitting in a rose garden while eating a fruit salad.

And it tastes really good too… the fragrance is almost overpowering, and it is almost an assault on the olfactory nerves, and while smelling it I was a wee bit worried that I was about to be tasting a tea that would be too perfume-y tasting because of the aroma of the tea.

But, I am liking it! The fruit flavor tapers the rose just enough so that it doesn’t come off too rose-y (although I do enjoy rose teas!) … what I’m trying to say is that it has a nice balance between fruit and flower. I like this … thanks again Azzrian!

For some reason I thought I had tried this already…but I haven’t. I also ‘just found’ this sampler in with my stuff I haven’t tried from Doulton yet and was super excited! YAY!

So…here goes…

I just found out that I am going to have a super busy afternoon writing (but will be taking brain breaks for steepster, of course) and thought I would start my afternoon with a black tea and then move on to others.

This smells like black tea, fruit, and floral. It’s a nice Reddish-dark brown. Taste-wise it is really good. It’s a sugary-sweet tasting flavored black. It reminds me of Rose Marzipan from Teavana without the Rose…you know that candied-sugar cube in that blend…that is what the sugar-sweet taste remind me of. There is a floral back-end to it but NOT an intense rose…it’s a delicate type floral…very nice! The more I drink this the more I like it…and I mean really, really LIKE it!!!! YUM!

The good thing about box A is that I have less things to try that’d go back in the box. But since it’s been awhile, probably since it came, I figured I’d try something else.

This is SO strongly rose in the bag I was worried it would taste like soap, because it sure smells like soap.

I followed the recommendations on the bag and it turned out just fine, as long as you drink it while it’s hot. Once it cools a bit, it does start to get that soapy rose taste. I didn’t really get much of a fruit flavor, but I guess it’s what helps keep the rose under control, because it is a rather nice rose black.

I may give it one more try, but it’ll probably continue on in a tea box.

Yeah today is pretty much all Traveling Tea Box (group A) samples. I’ll try pretty much any tea that lists rose as a primary note, so this one came out.

It certainly smells rosey, in a way that I love. Sometimes rose + fruit ends up smelling like cookies to me. I don’t know why, but I’ve come across it a few times now, and it seems to be a peculiarity of my nose/taste buds. Whatever, it’s awesome for me!

Woah the rose flavor in this is intense. It isn’t quite soapy or perfumy to me, but it is walking that line so those with less rose inclinations would likely find it that way. I am surprised at how much more intense the flavor is than the aroma. There is that slight cookie taste to me, but I get no fruit from this. Decently tasty, but I’m not sure it does exactly what it says.

TTB A sampler #1
The tea leaves remind me of Blood orange black from Drink the leaf with one exception: rose petals. The smell is very petallie….brewing…brewing…brewing…sip one….it is like drinking a cup of perfume. If you like that sort of thing, this may be it! Down the drain.

I got it for chirstmas and its not bad