Tea type
Black Tea
Ingredients
Black Tea, Natural Almond Flavor, Natural Cranberry Flavor, Natural Vanilla Flavor
Flavors
Chocolate, Almond, Cranberry, Fruity, Cocoa, Creamy, Nuts, Caramel, Vanilla, Earth, Marzipan, Musty, Sweet, Tart, Wood, Cherry, Raspberry, Artificial, Candy, Smooth, Bergamot, Burnt Sugar, Berry, Berries
Sold in
Bulk, Loose Leaf
Caffeine
High
Certification
Kosher
Edit tea info Last updated by Shae
Average preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 4 min, 0 sec 3 g 28 oz / 835 ml

From Our Community

1 Image

67 Want it Want it

  • +52

57 Own it Own it

  • +42

307 Tasting Notes View all

  • “My mom had another cardiac event this weekend, and is going to have some surgery today to see just what is wrong with her heart. I was looking forward to not spending more time in the hospital, but...” Read full tasting note
    96
  • “This is a good news/bad news sorta thing: my Harney&Sons order arrived today! Holy moley you guys. Everything smells so amazing! I guess the bad news is that I am UP to 145 teas, and some of...” Read full tasting note
    77
  • “Okay all, I am getting ready to preach! Three years ago this week I went for a mammogram. I was about a year late because I was too busy to get one and since I was the poster child for low risk...” Read full tasting note
  • “I was reading Rosehip’s review of this tea and decided it was exactly what I was in the mood for. Today the almond seems a bit stronger than usual, but I’m fine with that. It works well with the...” Read full tasting note
    86

From Harney & Sons

A flavorful blend of black tea, cranberry, and almond flavors, Boston tea was inspired by the famous bogs south of New England’s ‘city on a hill.’ Like other Back Bay pastimes, it’s acquired an ardent group of admirers.

Ingredients:
Black tea, natural cranberry flavor, natural vanilla flavor, almond flavor

Details: Our Founder ran the White Hart Inn in Salisbury, Connecticut for almost 25 years. And Holidays in the Fall were very busy. It was during that time that Mike fell in love with the tart taste of cranberries. And that is why he loves to make blends that incorporate cranberries.

Dry Leaves: China black tea are the base of this tea.

Liquor: This tea is a medium brown in the cup.

Aroma: This tea has hints of vanilla and almond and a more predominate aroma of cranberry.

Flavors: Like the aroma, this tea has multiple fruity and nutty flavors of almond, vanilla, and cranberry.

Caffeine Level: Caffeinated

Body: A medium body.

Brewing Time: 4 to 5 minutes

Brewing Temp: 212° Fº

https://www.harney.com/products/boston

About Harney & Sons View company

Since 1983 Harney & Sons has been the source for fine teas. We travel the globe to find the best teas and accept only the exceptional. We put our years of experience to work to bring you the best Single-Estate teas, and blends beyond compare.

307 Tasting Notes

1220 tasting notes

lol I haven’t touched this tea because I have an intense hatred for a certain Boston sports team, especially its captain, so…I associate this tea with them. And you know, how that I think about it, I should have tried this when there was a lockout and I couldn’t care at all but now I am ready to get my hate back in full gear. VROOM VROOM.

Right, so I don’t mind cranberry but it’s definitely a flavor I won’t grab over other berries especially. But I’ll drink it…almond, on the other hand I actively try to avoid. Now I love to eat almonds. But I can’t do sweet almond, and I especially can’t do it in a tea. The best I have ever done with sweet almond is that I can put amaretto in pancakes. That is all. I seriously have a bottle of amaretto just for that and I rarely make pancakes. I also have no idea why I bought it in the first place. Probably some other recipe.

This does smell fantastic in the bag though. I got my friend a tin and it was even better in such a large amount.

So it definitely is not in your face cranberry at all, like I was hoping it might be. The almond flavor mixes in with the cranberry about mid-sip. At first it’s just absolutely disgusting like Zdeno Chara, but towards the end of the sip it is really reminiscent of granola. But getting to granola takes strong taste buds. I think maybe if the cranberry was just a bit more tart, I might be able to ignore that almond flavoring, but it’s not happening.

The more I try the more repulsive it tastes. I hate you almond.

PS thank you for this sample, Alphakitty

Alphakitty

Haha, I share your hatred for Boston sports teams!

Login or sign up to leave a comment.

89
259 tasting notes

I am a big fan of Harney & Sons and I like their Paris and Florence teas. I ordered Boston! I forgot that the tea has cranberry flavors. When I opened the tin I was overwhelmed by an aroma that was not entirely pleasant: i put my finger on it: Paregoric soaked in cherry and stored in a humidor! I was a bit surprised by the intensity of this aroma and after sitting with it for a few minutes, I had to conclude: this is a concoction of paregoric, cherries, and some cigar tobacco.

Steeped, I smell the cranberry quite clearly. And the enticement of the paregoric has gone, taking with it my opium dreams (I was of the generation where mothers used paregoric as a catch-all medicine for their children—indeed I can remember trotting off to the drug store to buy her a bottle of paregoric and a package of Parliament cigarettes all for less than 50 cents).

So aside from being a blast to the past, Boston Tea proves to be a reasonably strong, robust black tea with cranberry aroma and flavor. I cannot pick on on the almond flavor specifically, but I do recommend this tea. After the moments of strangeness, the tea itself offers a generous tea/cranberry experience which is much more authentic than some of the other cranberry flavored teas I’ve sampled before. I think this would be a great tea to serve with a holiday dinner and a good tea to keep in stock. The aftertaste is delightfully cranberry too.

Au fond, my only disappointment is that the paregoric seems to have been a temporary illusion! I could also see mixing this tea 50/50 with Florence to sample the result.

Preparation
Boiling 4 min, 45 sec
Dan

I can remember my mom giving me paregoric as a child.

Rabs

I love that in some of your notes I need to use a dictionary ;)

ashmanra

My mom had a recipe for cough syrup, given to her by a doctor, that called for lemon juice, paragoric, and whiskey. When I was sick as a kid I would ask if it was time for my “booze.”

Login or sign up to leave a comment.

284 tasting notes

All I get out of this one is base. Why, boston, why? There’s something fruity at the back, I wouldn’t identify it as cranberry at all. And I get no almond.

Used one DAVIDs perfect scoop to 8 oz off boiling water for 3 minutes. 1 scant tsp of sugar. It’s not astringent, brews quite dark, smells like base, not much else. Wtf.

This is a crowd favourite but I tell you that whatever this is in my cup can’t be that popular.

Thank you to the oh so wonderful TheTeafairy for sending me a sample and satisfying my curiousity. All I have to say is “what’s all the fuss?” . I have a bit more so I can try again another day. Maybe I expected too much.

Yvonne

I’d love to try this one myself – I can only seem to find Paris being sold where I live.

Nxtdoor

I can’t find Harney here either, neither can most people, I think usually online order is the way to go.

Yvonne

I found it at Chapters, but none of the flavours I’m looking for. :(

TheTeaFairy

Ditto Nxtdoor, it makes a good everyday average tea, but not as spectacular as I expected it to be…

Fjellrev

Aww, that’s too bad. This is actually one of the hew Harney blends I actually really like. Go figure!

Login or sign up to leave a comment.

66
251 tasting notes

Another sipdown. I finished the last of my organic Dragonwell from Teavivre yesterday and forgot to review it, but I hope I will meet it again in a future order. Not so much with this H & S tea, unfortunately.

I know that a lot of folks like this one, but it is just too artificial on the cranberry for my palate. I was longing for any of my other better blacks the whole time I was drinking this. I will stick with Paris when I am looking for fruity and wonderful. Goodbye, Boston Blend! I will not miss you! :)

Preparation
Boiling 4 min, 45 sec

Login or sign up to leave a comment.

96
1353 tasting notes

Good morning Steepsterites,

This fine Saturday we are starting out with a gift from Dinosara and it’s another one of those Russian Roulette Brewings. Steep first, look it up second. Consequently my intuition landed me in a spot of trouble as it made me pick a tea which isn’t really a breakfast-suitable tea at all. At least, I would have been more likely to have it in the afternoon.

I was rescued, however, by that fact that once I tasted it, it didn’t seem quite so anachronistic at all. For some reason a tea with fruit and almonds in it manages to work quite well with our ritual weekend pancakes with apple bits in.

The aroma is largely almonds, I think, and then the cranberry underneath that adding a non-descript mahogany coloured fruity aspect to it. Bear in mind though that this is an almond aroma. It does not in any way, shape or form resemble marzipan, for which I am grateful. (I love marzipan, as well as just about any other type of confectionary (nearly) that you can think off, but I rather doubt it would have worked in this particular instance.)

This is one of those tea that does that funny switcheroo thing as it cools down, too. Now that I’m halfway through the cup and it’s heading towards Lukewarm Lane, it’s the cranberries who’s doing the driving and the almonds relocated to the backseat. I quite like it when a flavoured tea does that. It’s like you get the best of both, even if one does wish it could do so while the tea was still slightly warmer.

And that’s just the aroma.

In the flavour (which is a muddly orange, I think because of the almonds) it’s rather more even. I can find almonds and cranberries with equal ease, but I can’t really find the tea base very easily. Can’t be that interesting then, can it?

It’s very smooth and extremely well flavoured. Slightly heavy and super suitable for autumn. Thank you hugely, Dinosara! This was awesome!

Dinosara

So glad you like it! It’s one of my favorites from Harney.

TeaBrat

I want some!

Nicole

If you cook at all, steep it in liquids for your dessert recipes. Phenomenal creme brulee and ice cream… :)

Login or sign up to leave a comment.

72
6444 tasting notes

At first sip, I am getting a lot of almond and black base. However, as I continue to drink, the cranberry and vanilla come through as well. It is sweet but not over the top and very pleasant. In future though, I think I will either drop the temperature or steeping time to tone down the base.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 4 min, 0 sec 2 tsp 16 OZ / 473 ML
Roswell Strange

So, I guess we did the drinking the same tea thing twice today? :P

VariaTEA

lol you inspired me. Plus, I have 4 oz so I figured I should break into that

Login or sign up to leave a comment.

68
15019 tasting notes

SIPDOWN! (233) Thank you cavocorax for sending some of this my way. This is a weird blend for me. I totally get the almond taste, and that’s delicious but then the cranberry taste is like HEY! HEY YOU! Yeah..i’m tlaking to YOU! LOOK AT ME! and of course i’m like “but i don’t wannnaaaaaa”

Yeah, that happened. True story and all that jazz. haha ok but really? I can see how a large number of people would like this tea. I think though, I prefer my rich creamy teas to not have fruit in them. It’s like those fruit and nut chocolate bars…what’s up with that? You’re enjoying the delicious creamy chocolate taste…the nuts blend in nicely with it and then there’s this fruity. right in the middle of all that goodness. BAH! and i like fruit…but not when it interupts my deliciousness…it’s like nuts in brownies.. ick. why ruin a good thing!

LOL so anyway this tea? I love the almond/creamy/deliciousness but i could do without the cranberriness of it all…which means this probably isn’t the team for me but its not a BAD cup of tea :) Thanks Cavo!

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 3 min, 0 sec
Indigobloom

sounds yum :P

TeaLady441

Mmmm. Nuts with brownies……(I want!)

Login or sign up to leave a comment.

1112 tasting notes

Mmmmmmmmm. This one tastes of cranberries and warmth. Wonderful with milk and sugar (and digestive biscuits). I could just picture being in Boston all bundled up in a tam and mittens and boots, stopping into Trident Booksellers to get a novel and sit in the cafe and read (and admire my vintage dress that I bought at Oona’s earlier in the day). Yes, I have fond memories of Boston :)

Ashmanra said that this is a more solitary tea (and Cranberry Autumn a more social one) and I couldn’t agree more. This is certainly the cozy one full of books and college campuses and window seats and wool, not the tromping through an apple orchard with your dear ones then baking a pie with them and making dinner too, chatting all the while (that’s Cranberry Autumn).

The flavored teas I best like are very evocative for me – they make me remember childhood, travel, seminal experiences, forevermoments. This tea is very very very evocative for me. Thank you Mr. Harney! and thank you ashmanra for sending me some! I love it!

I would go curl up and reread Leonard Cohen’s novel Beautiful Losers (the book I bought at Trident in Boston) but I am in the thick of Miss Read’s Thrush Green and can’t quite tear myself away!

Preparation
Boiling 5 min, 0 sec
Brian

I’ve realized H&S do an amazing job with flavors, or at least from reading your reviews :)

sophistre

Aww. This tickles me to no end. I will wave at Trident for you!

gmathis

Nice, nice review—I am now craving not only the tea, but all of the atmospheric wonderment you have described above.

Login or sign up to leave a comment.

90
1184 tasting notes

Thank you to Nicole and Batrachoid for these samples!

This seems like a fall tea with cranberry and almonds. And since it is almost fall, time to try this!

Upon first sip, I get a bit of tart cranberry with almond and the black tea base coming through. The cranberry isn’t too tart though, just enough for it to be like real cranberries. I feel like I would want the almond to be just a little bit more prevalant here.

This is a great blend!

Preparation
Boiling 4 min, 30 sec

Login or sign up to leave a comment.

82
390 tasting notes

this came to me thanks to ifjuly. much thanks!

i don’t get notes of cranberry or of almond, though i do get some tones of strawberry and an element of cream (but not like the donut, lol). smells fruitier than it tastes, but still tastes quite decadent…. would i buy it myself? in the shadow of fruits d’alsace and the black lotus and any other number drop kick blends i’ve had lately (many but not all from europe) no. however, still makes a very nice cup and if i were in ifjuly’s living room i wouldn’t say ‘no’.

Preparation
Boiling 4 min, 0 sec

Login or sign up to leave a comment.