I was afraid to try this tea. I’ve smelled a green Sakura of a lesser quality and thought it smelled really bizarre and intense. So after a failed cuppa this morning ( I only usually allow myself one cup of caffeine a day, as doctors have said NONE) I decided to tempt fate and go with something I probably wouldn’t like and wouldn’t drink the whole cup.
Foiled again.
This is a tea that you probably want to steep exactly as directed on the package. I was lucky to get the tea bags in my 2014 Happy Bag, so I didn’t have to worry about the perfect scoop. When reading the instructions, the ingredients were listed: Black tea (vietnam, china, india) pink pepper, rosemary, flavorings. Now I add milk and honey to all tea….it’s the only way I can move my hypersensitivity to bitter (aka tannins) away from my tongue. I was sure that adding milk and honey to something with pepper and rosemary would be a complete fail. wrong. surprisingly wrong! I am really quite surprised by the PLEASANTNESS of this tea!! The cherry is tart, not like a life saver/cough syrup/gummy bear. It it not sour. The rosemary and pepper lay behind the cherry to give it depth and complexity. The black tea blend is perfect to float the above flavors on. This is the first tea that I’ve actually felt had a complexity to it similar to wine. The mug is almost gone and I still can’t believe I like it. It probably won’t be an every day tea for me, but I’ll have to keep it around as I can already tell I’m going to have cravings for it on the odd day when the world just isn’t complex enough for me already.
