I love the flavor of wine, but generally not the alcohol part. Not that I have anything against alcohol, from my tasting notes it’s clear that I am not above throwing a few splashes in my tea if the flavors match. XD But for me it just makes wine a… less pleasant experience. So I like cooking with it, I like making desserts with it, but I don’t generally drink a whole lot of it. Thus, I was pretty excited to see a wine-flavored tea, since I’d never heard of such a wondrous thing. I snatched this up in Element Tea’s closing sale (possibly the last one, as it vanished a few minutes after I ordered it).
The dry leaves are beautiful downy white peony, and all of them in my bag are intact. A good sign, since they’re quite easy to crush in transit (and tea comes a pretty long way!). There are whole jasmine flowers and rose petals too, but the smell was… weird. Very fake grape-y. It was a little beast to brew too: first I had way too much water, then I dumped some and ended up brewing it for twice the recommended time. I felt bad possibly screwing up a tea that might be the last of its kind, but oh well.
It still smells kind of artificial in the cup, and the taste hot was… not exactly my stripe. So I let it sit for a few hours, tossed some ice in, and magic happened. Lightly floral, sweet and almost fruity from the white peony, and BAM wine! It’s pretty assertive (possibly because I brewed it for so long?) but it really works iced. And I know it’s very wine-y tastes, because the bf tried it and made a “blech” face—he hates wine XD. And now I’m depressed that I can never buy this again.
