First Review. VERY DIFFERENT! This is the PERFECT tea to drink when watching an old movie like Murder on the Orient Express or an English Murder Mystery! I need to redecorate my condo in chintz and add a proper tea table and Lomonosov Teapot. Why? This is an Old World floral tea…one that takes you somewhere else…to a place in time where you first thought tea belonged before you were educated to know better. Not tea bags…not there…but in old movies where there was tea service and refinement. I’m getting carried away again being a visual thinker in my right mind (Lefty). Rose petals in tea are rarely this sweet and floral. I am reminded more of very fragrant trailing roses on an arbor in the heat of the day…so concentrated. There is safflower and a citrus finish that keeps the tea bright. I have no idea what the fruit is. Possibly sour cherry? This is a popular Russian fruit flavor in tea. I went to taste my jam and think this is it since I use it in my other Czar Nikolas ll for guests (see other notes). Very nice sweetened. Adding milk is not necessary but I tried it and it’s just ok. I steeped 5 minutes. Good dessert tea. I would serve this with chocolate (dark) or a salty cheese (opposites work well together). Oh yes this is inexpensive…8.8 oz cost me $7.99 plus shipping (amazon) same with the other Czar Nikolas ll Renaissance (exporter is in Sacramento,CA with no online ordering).
Feeling nostalgic today…remembering a time most of you were not alive as yet. San Francisco in the 1950’s. You HAD to dress up to go into town. Hat and gloves even as a little girl. Grandmother wore her mink coat or stole. She had money…we didn’t but we always were clean and pressed. Anyway, there were flower vendor stalls all along Powell Street (where the Cable Cars run) and around Union Square. The favorite flowers of mine were nosegay’s of violets and baby roses or just violets. Rows and rows of nosegays. Pick one beautiful bunch out for a small price and carry it around in your gloved hand. This tea is like that sweet smelling nosegay. My grandfather (Charlie Cameron) took me dancing at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco on my 13th Birthday which was grand indeed! He looked like Clark Gable! OK lock me up. Getting too syrupy!
