70

You guessed it: vanilla. Not the chemical/artificial vanilla flavor you find in a lot of teas… a good, solid, pleasant natural vanilla. Not quite as good as splitting fresh beans from Papua New Guinea and dropping them into a bottle of grey goose for 6 months, but hey it’s tea not vanilla extract, and still beats the taste of typical grocery store vanilla extract or vanilla sugars/syrups I have tried adding to tea & coffee before.

The vanilla isn’t overwhelmingly strong. It’s there but doesn’t drown you in it. Not necessarily a bad thing, as the tea itself is pretty mild as well – the website says “black tea” but I’m guessing it will be a partially oxidized Darjeeling because it brews coppery/amber somewhere between an oolong and a BLACK black, and I picked up a bit of muscatel flavors in there. Balanced, but I have had better vanilla flavored teas, and there’s not really much else to it. Tea Merchant’s Silk Dragon holds the top spot on my vanilla leader board right now and wasn’t in any danger of being unseated by this, but when I want a little less vanilla without having to skip the first infusion, combine 3-4 infusions, or without any other additional flavors, I’ll come back to this.

No complaints, but not wowed. Nice, pleasant vanilla tea I won’t bother restocking after I run out – too many quality alternatives with less hassle and lower cost. Now, if I lived in Paris that would be a different story and I might stock it more often ;-)

Flavors: Vanilla

Preparation
200 °F / 93 °C 3 min, 0 sec 2 tsp 12 OZ / 350 ML

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Musician, pilot, philanthropist, tea lover. Nothing beats a spiced oolong at 10,000 feet. Except maybe a cuppa dian hong with my feet next to the fireplace. Or some fresh bai hao yin zhen before bedtime. My rating system is pretty much like this:

1-20 : ‘Blech’ cuppa. Didn’t even finish the one I brewed, rest went in trash. That bad, at least for me.

21-40: ‘Meh’ cuppa. Finished it but threw away the rest of the tea or used it for other purposes like baking, gifts for in-laws, or serve to unwanted houseguests. Kinda like Twinnings or Lipton bag tea.

41-60: ‘Standard’ cuppa. Won’t buy any more, but will certainly brew all that I have left. Probably will use it to blend with other teas or as a base, or large quantities of iced tea for parties and such.

61-80: Good cuppa. Now we’re talking. Worth buying more if at the right price, love blending some of these too. Sometimes a few oddballs will find their way into this score just because I liked the fruity flavor or having it as an iced tea. Also my starting score range for new kinds of tea until I develop a good feel for my preferences or learn to better distinguish quality characteristics.

81-99: Awesome cuppa. You’ll probably find this in my pantry pretty regularly, unless it has been discontinued or I’m waiting for my next trip to Asia or Europe to pick up some more. Holds up well to multiple infusions (unless black/herbal), and will typically drink it unadulterated/straight. I’ll gladly pay premium prices and chances are I’ll be ordering and tasting a bunch of other teas this producer/company offers.

100: Cuppa bliss, oh where have you been all my life???! I will burn frequent flier miles and journey to the ends of the earth while paying nearly any price to make sure I have this stocked at all times. Over time as I discover some magical new teas, a few may fall off this list. Try to keep it max 1 per type of tea.

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