Malwa

The cherry taste is there in this tea but I think I had too much hibiscus in my scoop, as this cup tastes too sour even with sugar. I can smell cherry, and a sweet berry scent, part of the smell references cream soda and cherry popsicles, but the taste is hidden by the sour aspects of this tea (ie hibiscus, rosehips, red currants). The sweet fruit accents become more apparent in the tea as it cools as a slightly candyish cherry taste ( similar to the notes found in cherry scented green tea), leaving a bright fruit note. However this taste is still buried underneath the sour notes. I will try this tea again after removing some of the hibiscus and try it cold brewed to try to bring out the cherry notes and reduce the sour notes. It is supposed to be a sour cherry tea but as it is this brewing was so sour that this over shadowed all of the other flavours.

Bought this on impulse today purely because… well, Melissa plant? It’s got my name on it! (spelt differently but! still!)

Melissa or melisse is a lemon balm herb, I think, so named because it attracts honeybees (melissa in Greek) so. . . it’s a herbal tea, that’s about it.

Didn’t brew it for as long as I should have done but then I have this terrible habit of judging a brew by its colour. I tend to freak out if my peppermint tea starts getting brown in colour so I popped the teabag out after maybe three minutes…

It tastes a little… well, herb-y? But also earthy in a way that reminds me of pu-erh. Earthy, with a mellow, warm tea-y taste, and a little bit of citrus. I think it must smell more lemony than it tastes.

Interesting to try my namesake, nonetheless!

A Polish herbal tea, winter fruit-based, hence the name ‘Winter Fantasy’ – blends apple, hibiscus, berries, star anise, cinammon, and so forth. This was the stringless bag version.
I happened upon it at my local Baltic gift store, they also sell Malwa blends in ‘loose-leaf’ though they’re all tisanes. This gift store also sells this on line, but you might have trouble finding it other places since it tends to be more of a novelty. Even still, at $3.99 at an import store, it was worth the purchase simply to try it.

The taste? I wasn’t expecting to be excited about it, but it surprised me. There’s not enough hibiscus to overpower things, and it’s got both citrus and spice that come through. Nothing like the American bagged herbal blends I’ve tried in past. It calls for an 8-minute steeping time, which I loyally adhered to, and yet nothing tasted overdone. It was a spicy, almost grapefruit-like evening sip. Something for certain American herbals to aspire to.

More about how I found it and pics of the ‘lebkuchen’ I enjoyed it with on my full blog post: http://t.co/hZaVpzk3