I hadn’t planned on drinking more black tea today (I already have a black Darjeeling waiting for me after I finish this one) but when the mail came and brought a box of teas from Foxfire Teas – a company from Portland that I’ve wanted to try for a while now – I had to add another black tea to the queue … in fact, this tea “took cuts” in line, because I didn’t want to drink an Assam too late in the day. It’s already 6:20 pm, any later and I’ll be up all night.
This is an AWESOME black currant tea. I think it might just be the best black currant tea I’ve tried. Not that I’ve sampled a whole lot, but, of the ones that I have tasted, this one belongs at the top spot.
It smells incredible. The fruit tones really POP … it smells a bit like my gramma’s kitchen when she’d make grape jelly. I’m not a big fan of grape flavored foods, but, my gramma’s grape jelly? Now that stuff was awesome! She’d make it from the grapes right off her grapevine, seed the grapes and then cook them then mash them through a sieve. She’d then pour off just a little bit of the juice and let me drink it after it had cooled and before she’d add all the sugar and pectin to make the jelly. To this day, I really don’t like other grape juice, because nothing compares to that juice.
And while this does SMELL like grapes cooking, it doesn’t taste like grapes. It tastes like currants. Although I must admit that currants and grapes do have a similar flavor profile, or perhaps I should say currants and fermented grapes (wine) have a similar flavor profile. This tastes more like currants than fresh grapes. It is sweet and tart … leaning more toward the tart than the sweet, but balanced enough between the two to keep it from being too tart for my sometimes tart-sensitive palate.
The Assam here is fantastic. I love that this is an Assam and not a Ceylon! It gives the cup a very rich, bold flavor. This is a wine-y Assam as opposed to a really malt-y, biscuit-y kind of Assam, but, there are some really lovely malt tones to this as well.
Truly lovely!
Here’s a link to Foxfire Teas: http://foxfireteas.myshopify.com/ They ROCK!
