Harris Tea

The tea smells of plum, cherry , cocoa and faint lemon tones. It is very smooth with a thin body and tastes very fruity. It taste of having eaten black cherries and dark bitter chocolate with a hint of dark malt and leaves a freshening feeling at the top of the mouth. This is really flavourful for a bagged tea.

I have to get up early in the mornings nowadays, so I’ve been making a 4-cup pot of coffee and downing it all to be able to get through the day. I know I’m ruining my morning tea habit and ingesting far too much caffeine to be healthy, but I’m actually kind of happy to be using all the old coffee that’s clogging up my tea stash.

This is the perfect tea for days when I drink too much coffee. It’s well-built and strong, but easy to mix with milk (anywhere from 10-50% milk), so it’s like cutting the caffeine and adding Vitamin D. The best of all worlds! Magnesium from the coffee, and calcium/fat/riboflavin from the tea-milk! I would totally overdose on this tea when I’m under the weather. It’s especially good with a little bit of honey.

So I’m sorry for getting all ethnocentric with this, but there is definitely a difference between American and Indian tastes when it comes to tea. Being half-Indian/half-Texan, it’s hard to describe the immense sadness that overcomes me when I experience the American tea culture. That being said, I know that American-biased tea drinkers won’t like this tea that much. In the end, though, it’s their loss, because this is a strong black tea that has a good depth and mellow flavor. Serving this tea with milk brings out its flavor that much more — and also makes it great for tea time, get-togethers, and as a drink with meals (I recommend cardamom cookies). The nice thing about this tea, too, is that it’s hard to overbrew it. It can be made light or dark depending on steep time, but it doesn’t get quite so tannin-y if you forget about for a while.

This is why Fruity Herbal Tea freak me out…BLAH! Once sip…and sour fish face later and the cup goes down the drain…