Autumn Harvest! Decided to go with another nutty offering this morning. I got this tea from a Boise Farmer’s Market, and it is a black/green blend with roasted almonds and almond flavoring. The smell of the leaf at the booth had me sold! It reminds me a bit of amaretto, with those sweet honey and cherry notes, and has a sweet marzipan dessertiness to the aroma, but it has a bit more toasty and nutty depth to the scent than many almond teas I’ve found.
Since the tea is a blend of leaf that normally get such different brewing parameters, steeping took a bit of experimentation to get it the way I liked it. I use 190F water, the best happy medium I can get to not turn the green tea bitter while extracting as much flavor as possible from the black tea, and steep for 2-3 minutes depending on how dark I want my tea that morning — no longer, or the tea gets too astringent for my tastes.
The tea brews a very toasty brown color, and despite the leaf having the strongly sweet marzipan smell, it isn’t a syrupy-sweet cup. It actually has a more roasty nutty flavor, with a bit of a sweet or dessert-like finish that is slightly honey-like that surfaces right at the finish of the sip. The base of the tea has a very subtle earthy/vegetal quality that compliments the nuttiness really nicely, and the mouthfeel comes off somewhat thick or rich. I like the transition of the deep nuttiness to the sweet marzipan finish. It reminds me a bit of TeaSource’s Roasted Chestnut tea, as both are quite good in getting a nice savory almond nut quality to their flavor, except Roasted Chestnut has a more roasty profile overall to its nuttiness, and this one has a sweeter, more honeyed quality.
Yum!
Flavors: Almond, Earth, Honey, Marzipan, Nutty, Roasted Nuts, Thick, Vegetal
