I received a tea bag sample of this tea in the mail from the folks at The Republic of Tea. I have liked several of their teas so I thought I would drop this one into a cup of boiling water too.
After the round bag was steeped in boiling water for about five minutes, the brewed aroma was incredible. It smelled just like fresh blackberries. The aroma made me quite excited to take a swig.
The flavor of my first sip was…quite mysterious. The very sweet and potent blackberry smell was replaced in the taste by something floral and almost perfumed. The exact flavor was at first nondescript. Then, after several seconds, blackberry began to slowly crawl onto my taste buds.
All in all, this tea wasn’t bad. It wasn’t bitter. I just felt like the cart was put before the horse this time, or perhaps more accurately, the aroma was put before the taste. Maybe I would have liked it more if the flavor had arrived sooner. Even so, I would love it if I could put it in an incense burner instead of a tea pot.
UPDATE: I just discovered that I reviewed this tea two years ago. Either I was in a better mood then or I wasn’t quite the curmudgeon that I am now. Surprisingly, even though I described it more favorably last time, I still gave it the same exact rating, a 70!
Flavors: Berries, Blackberry, Floral, Perfume
