Berry Cotton Candy

Sipdown (622)!

Thank you for the share VariaTEA! This sounds like a flavour right up my alley, and the dry leaf smelled quite nice – sweet, sugary berries!

Steeped up, this is actually really sweet, but in a way that I feel is appropriate for a cotton candy inspired blend. I actually feel like I’ve experienced this exact profile in a tea before but I’m really struggling to recall which tea – it’s a serious Deja Vu moment for me though. Just a hint of the white tea base (hot hay notes, a bit of honeysuckle) but mostly a very candy sweet, sugary artificial “berry” flavour – not any one specific berry, but just the generic berry flavour that you really would get from blue, fluffy cotton candy. It’s accurate! Maybe a little too artificial to be perfect, but at the same time I don’t know how you would convey the titular flavour profile without having that artificial quality!? It is a synthetic flavouring, afterall…

Thanks for the share VariaTea – this was nice!

Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/Bxxea7egYIw/

So tbh I grabbed this tea this morning because I have Cotton Candy Caramel Corn and had an idea for a tea picture. But once it started brewing, I was excited to get to try another berry cotton candy tea.

I brewed this like a green tea because I thought it was a green tea but now I realize its a white tea. Oh Well.

Tastewise there is a nice jammy blueberry flavor. However, despite that, I am finding this a bit flat. I am blaming the white tea and also stevia which coats the tongue. It is not overly sweet as blends with stevia usually are but there is still that stevia taste coupled with hay notes from the white tea. It all sort of stops the jammy blueberry in its tracks instead of letting it shiny. Also, I think their hope was the stevia would lend itself to the “Cotton Candy” aspect of this tea but I don’t think it is successful in its job. They should have just thrown actual sugar in this if that was their plan.

Still, I am glad I got a chance to try this tea because it was one that definitely peaked my interest. Thank you Cameron B for the share!

Home – 7:00 PM

I packaged some of this up for a swap last night, and it smelled so good that I left it out to steep some myself.

I must say, the blueberry flavor here is really good. It’s deep and jammy and has a touch of elderberry with it as well. I can taste a bit of the white tea, but it’s mostly just a vehicle for the yummy berry flavor.

The only issue I have is that this tea has stevia in it. I’ll never understand why companies feel the need to sweeten my teas for me – I guess they assume most people will think it tastes better than unsweetened tea and buy it because of that? It just annoys me…

I mean, this isn’t horribly sweet, but I don’t think it needs the sweetness. Oh well, still tasty. I bet this would be fabulous cold-brewed as well, but I haven’t been drinking iced tea lately with the chillier weather.