Thank you Kittenna for this sample.
I just realised that I have never tried Cherry Garcia ice cream but have always wanted to. It may be because if I get the option to buy ice cream which I seldom do (too many calories) then I go for my favourite: Cookie Dough.
The raw tea blend has super large round cherry pieces (they remind me of large currants) with finely cut black tea and a fair amount of cocoa nib. It does smell a little chocolatey and sweet but at this stage it’s too hard to say for certain what it would be, if I was blind folded I wouldn’t have necessarily said it had cherries specifically.
Once steeped the tea has a strong cocoa smell that’s slightly sweet but as as much as it’s raw form.
The taste is a little better, sweet and somewhat cherry like with a creamy finish. It’s not bitter but nor is it completely smooth which makes me think that perhaps the black tea is too strong for the cherry flavour. I think I would struggle to drink this straight so I will be adding a drop of milk to it, after all it should only help aid the ice cream effect.
Well the milk has helped reduce the black teas harshness which pushes the sweet fruit to centre stage. It’s still hard to define it as cherry though which is a little disappointing. The cocoa nib always seems to have a stale/dusty sort of taste (as do most teas that contain cocoa nib) so it’s not as fresh as I would have liked either. I think that’s the main issue, the black tea and cocoa nib are too heavy and harsh for the cherries to actually come through.
Happy to have tried this but it’s hands down not for me. I would have made this into a white tea instead of black as you can make it A – creamier, B – fruitier and C it would not overtake all flavours leaving it more balanced and lighter, fresher in taste. But that’s just me.
