All-Butter Shortbread

Ok, so this tea is WACKY.

I grant that, opening the eensy weensy little sample sachet I ordered and breathing in deeply, this tea really does smell uncannily like good shortbread: it’s got that nutty, buttery, biscuity light sweet fragrance down so perfectly that if I were blindfolded, I don’t think I’d be able to tell the difference between this and an actual piece of shortbread based on smell.

And then there’s the flavour.

It’s not the same sort of let down that you get when a tea smells really potent and tastes like a cup of lightly astringent water that may once have been homeopathically exposed to a molecule of flavour. It’s definitely got a taste, it’s just a weird divergence from its dry smell – the flavour isn’t sweet at all, and that shortbready note is overtaken by masses of roasty butter that almost tows a savoury-sweet line instead. If I had to compare it to anything, it would be a fragrant lovechild of buttery popcorn and buttery basmati rice, so there’s a hint of an inherent underlying sweetness, but also at times it almost feels like there’s a bit of salt going on as well? WACKY.

And it’s actually really, really nice. I’m on like my fifth resteep now and the buttery popcorn flavour is just now finally giving way to that this-tea-is-nearly-spent cardboard taste. So weird. My mouth is confused.