A better experience with this one than with Bats in the Belfry. The black and yellow bug sprinkles are kind of cute, and they don’t bleed colour like the bats I mentioned in my Bats in the Belfry tasting note. They don’t add any flavour, either, so I guess they’re kind of gimmicky, but they’re sweet. Again, though, the sprinkles and the name are the only things that make this a Halloween tea. Otherwise, it’s just a run of the mill vanilla cream rooibos.
That’s fine with me, though, because there’s space in my affections for a vanilla cream rooibos. Especially one that tastes of vanilla and cream, and this one does that all right. The rooibos is really quite prominent, so the first taste is the typical woody-brassy flavour I know well and don’t really love. It’s saved by the vanilla, though, which really comes out in the middle of the sip. It’s a nice, natural vanilla bean flavour, rather than a chemically vanilla essence type taste, too. The creaminess is more detectable as a mouthfeel than a flavour, although there is a depth to the vanilla that suggests something like coffee creamer to me. I added milk, too, so they work together really well to create quite a decadent creaminess.
This isn’t the best rooibos I’ve ever tried, but it’s a nice enough tea. It’s comforting, sweet and creamy, and it works well as a cosy tea on a cold dark night. I’ll happily drink the rest of this — it’s not earth shattering, but it’s pleasant, and the bugs are a novelty. That’s probably more than enough Halloween excitement for me :)
