Orange Jasmine

This is another sample from my swap with moraiwe. I love jasmine and haven’t tried many black jasmine teas, so I was curious about this one. While steeping, the tea smells very floral – it’s not necessarily an aroma I’d normally associate with jasmine, though, but rather a generic and quite perfume-y kind of floral.
Flavor-wise, the orange notes are very strong. That’s the first thing I notice. The jasmine’s a close second and, again, it’s more that generic, perfume-y (teetering on the border of soapiness) floral as opposed to a true, natural jasmine. The flavoring overwhelms the tea base to the point where I can hardly taste it at all. This isn’t terrible, but it’s not particularly good either. There are plenty of better jasmine teas – bagged and loose – out there.

So, last night I found all these bagged tea in my cupboards.

It’s old. Not like. Expired old. But ‘Huh, where did you come from?’ old. Which means it’s probably creeping up there, because I don’t think I’ve seen it since Fiance and I moved in together two years ago. So, I knew this was gonna be a treat.

I cold steeped this, so if it was terrible, at least it wouldn’t be crazy bitter terrible.

The good news is that the Jasmine aspect of this doesn’t taste like soap, which I was worried about. It does however taste like some nondescript floral I can’t place and am not sure I like. I can just barely taste the orange over it, but what’s there isn’t terribly natural tasting. And the tea is mediocre (expected).

And somehow it’s still better than some looseleaf blends I’ve had.