Erm yes. Bear with me, Steepsterites. It’s just because it’s now I’m drinking down Tea Corner and therefore I can’t wait another half year to use this one. It’s already a pretty old bag, predating my Sample Tracking Plan, so I’m clueless as to where it came from. (It came from H&S, hurr hurr hurr!)
So yes. Christmas tea in June with lots of sunshine outside. A far cry from the wet undies causing downpour of the other days, which I was forced out in as I needed to buy cat food. (It later transpired that there actually was half a bucketful left in the old bag and I could have saved myself the shower… Isn’t that just typical)
I can smell spice in here. I think it’s the cardamom primarily, but there is also something that makes me think ginger. Ginger. Oh dear. It’s mostly cardamom, though, and I like that. (Lovely in pancakes along with some lemon juice, actually. Don’t ask me for measurements. I tend to use a smidge and a squirt. Sometimes a large smidge and squirt, sometimes small)
It is quite cardamom-y in flavour, and I’m discovering that I actually quite like that. This is odd because I don’t customarily care much for spice in tea. I don’t like ginger at all, tea or otherwise, but can deal with a wee bit in cooking or baking. I like cinnamon in cooking and baking but not too fond of it in tea. But cardamom? Apparently this goes down a lot better with me than the other two when mixed into tea.
Since I’m used to cardamom in the combination with lemon juice in our saturday morning pancakes, the cardamom here does make me rather wish for something citrus-y. I should think a teensy bit of orange, or perhaps even mandarin or tangerine, would have done well.
I usually try not to look at other people’s posts about something until I’ve finished writing my own, because if I’m too aware of other people’s findings, it tends to pollute my thoughts and manipulate me to try and find the same things. This time, though, I accidentally cheated. This just goes to show that I ought to write my note in something else and copy paste it into the posting window here when I’m done. There were more than one person that spoke of white chocolate-y flavours, and I have to say, I’m utterly stumped on that one. This is not like any white chocolate I’ve ever had. I’m surprised so many people seem to have come to this conclusion.
As I drink this, the vanilla shows up, but only on the swallow. It’s one of those building-itself-up flavours that you can’t taste right away. Almond and chamomile, however, eluded me until I got further down into the cup where something strange happened.
The cardamom flavouring transformed! I’m pretty certain it was the same note that I was initially interpreting as cardamom, because it changed so slowly that I didn’t realise what was going on until I went ‘hey, wait a minute…’ Instead of being strongly cardamom, it’s now fairly strongly almond.
It’s a two-in-one tea, this. Cardamom flavoured first, then almond and vanilla flavoured second.
I quite like it, although it is rather out of season.
