Caramel Apple - Flowery Assam

go go apple theme for today! Knocking the rating down a little on this one because it feels like a really sweet herbal to me. I often forget that this has actual tea in it. Still a relatively decent enough cup of tea..but more so if you pretend it doesn’t have a black base…which i can’t taste at all. :)

Oh YUM! This is one of the teas that was sent to me for the first sTEAp Shoppe virtual tasting.

And YUM! It tastes so good! It tastes like one of those gourmet candied apples you might find in the chocolate shop at the mall – huge apple covered in caramel and chocolate. mmmmmmmm! So good!

The base is an Assam tea, and it has hints of floral notes, a wonderful malty tone that plays off the caramel-y flavors very nicely, and a really delicious fruit note to it that accentuates the apple flavors well. This is a very well-conceived blend.

The apple tones are a bit hidden with the first couple of sips, but, after that they really start to make themselves known. It is a tart, juicy apple taste … but not too tart. I like the hint of tartness because it contrasts with the sweetness of the chocolate and the caramel.

This is an INCREDIBLY yummy tea. I’m loving everything that I’ve tried thus far from sTEAp Shoppe!

Finished the dregs of this up today. It has pretty good caramel apple flavour. I do like it. However, there’s not much black tea in here at all. Makes it more of a late afternoon/evening tea.

I would consider adding it to an order, but they’re rather far down my list at this point.

This tea really surprised me! I had the apple pie by sTEAp awhile back and was very underwhelmed by it. I just wanted something more out of it. This tea does not suffer the same fate. It is amazingly tasty. I love caramel apples and this tea honestly tastes like taking a bite out of a gooey caramel apple (without the mess!). The assam base is very mild in the background and blends so nicely with the flavors. This is a definite re-order. I’m so glad I finally tried it!

I was wicked excited to try this one, and it was ok, but I got this sticky aftertaste that I just didn’t love. I’m sure it’s just sugar from the caramel but it felt artificial and left the taste in my mouth for a while. However, in terms of the flavors being accurate, they definitely are. The apple was a classic granny smith apple taste, which personally is my favorite kind of apple to dip in caramel.

It does kind of feel like I’m at the country fair, which I appreciate, and I can definitely imagine enjoying this more in the fall. OOOH or as a latte in the fall!! Awesome. doing it.

I was nervous about trying this one because apple in tea and I usually don’t get along—it’s possibly my most loathed tea ingredient—but the reviews were so good, and I was crossing my fingers this would be more a sweet or even baked-type apple flavor due to the name instead of tart raw apple juice-ish apple. I made my husband a cup tonight so he could be the guinea pig and when he liked it I tried it too. It helped that it smells wonderful if not very caramel apple-y dry—the chocolate is quite present. You might think cacao nibs in a tea called Caramel Apple would be weird, but it’s yummy! I can’t really explain why/how it works (I will say I bet the intense cacao flavor goes together with the rich bold Assam like gangbusters), but it’s delicious both to smell and taste. As it’s cacao nibs it has that deep relatively unsweet chocolate profile I adore. It was easy to imagine a caramel apple tea turning out badly—astringent raw apple clashing against sharply sugary, possibly fake or plastic tasting caramel notes, say—but this is really good. The caramel comes across way less like standard sweet sticky candy than the little creamy toasty-flavored gourmet ones for adults, where it’s almost like browned butter, more rich than sweet. So as a whole this doesn’t taste like fresh juicy apple coated in toothachingly sweet caramel—maybe that’d be a disappointment if you have your heart set on its namesake, but I didn’t really, just wanted something comforting that felt appropriate for fall and this did. It’s rich and the flavor is deep and well blended between intense notes and creamy sweet ones. Yay to an apple tea I like!

My Tall Tea Gift Box came today! I’m so excited! Right away I tore open the padded envelope, opened the box and started twisting the lids off the tins (Those are really nice tins too) and sniffing every tea. I decided to try the Caramel Apple first.

I may have put more tea than necessary in my tea strainer, but i hate having a tea being too weak because I didn’t add enough tea. Then I had issues with the thermometer trying to get the water at 205 degrees, I need to get a proper tea thermometer, the one I was using was inaccurate, or water boils at 200 degrees.

While the tea was still hot all I could taste was apple and assam tea. As it cooled I began to taste caramel, slight hint of chocolate. If you drink this tea too fast you’ll miss out.

This tea is fine on its own though a little sugar will not ruin it.

Thank you TastyBrew! After much deliberation, I decided to try this one first from the samples that you sent to me.

This is a very rare sort of tea that actually tastes better than it smells. It smells like caramel-apple-cardboard-style. I was prepared to be disappointed.

It’s quite tasty, but doesn’t taste like a caramel apple to me. It does taste sweet, and it tastes like assam, but I’m not exactly picking up individual flavors beyond that. I much prefer underachieving dessert flavor than over anyway. This makes for a good biscuit-dunking tea. I have teas that I drink alone and teas that I reserve for my most favorite Biscoff biscuits.

This is definitely a tea that I’d like to have around, but I don’t know yet if it will become a regular.

UPDATE 5/25/2013: I found another tea that better fills my niche for this one (Macaron -Mariage Freres) as it smells and tastes good and I like the apple flavor of the new one better.