Whittard of Chelsea
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I don’t drink a lot of moroccan mint, because I don’t like gunpowder. That said, I did enjoy this tea: there’s a great balance between green tea and peppermint, you can clearly taste both without one overpowering the other. I don’t know if it was good enough to make me want more of this tea, though.
I was expecting some delicate green taste, so I was surprised to get an immediate impression of oolong. It’s honey-grassy, quite nice, and the taste develops and follows through. It stands up to subsequent infusions, and keeps its moreishness. Well worth buying, you can get it at Whittards without having to go to snobby expensive tea specialists. All the same, it tastes to me like a reasonably agreeable oolong.
My aunt was in Durham for July to work on her degree. Luckily, she brought me back some tea! I am fairly certain this is the tea I have, though mine is a 50 count of teabags rather than loose. I was thrown off at first by the talk of mangos and tropical fruits because I expected a black tea with rose (and nothing else) but the smell was very enticing. My grandmother thought it smelled terrible, but she mostly likes to mock my teas.
Last night, the beau and I decided to try it out. We sat around drinking tea with candles lit. Sounds romantic, right? Well, let me add that we were playing Magic. You know, the card game. Yup, we’re cool. Anyway, the tea actually impressed me. The black tea was very mild and the “troical” flavour more forward but in general it was still on the milder side. Granted, we steeped it a little weak, but I really enjoyed it. It was wonderful to sit and sip mindlessly which is exactly what I need sometimes. Definitely reliable and quite tasty, but I wouldn’t call it English Rose. I don’t know much about Rose teas but I didn’t identify any rose flavour.
I made a pot of this with two, heaped teaspoons brewed for four and a half minutes.
It has an aroma of pizza base and ‘pine-fresh’ disinfectant.
In the mouth it has butter, conifer sawdust, wood-smoke, the basic tea-flavour, of course; but all well-blended together with none prominent above the others. There are tiny hints of mixed, dried fruit and cut grass and the tiniest ‘bite’ – something reminiscent of white pepper or root ginger, but almost more of a feel than a taste.
For purposes of comparison, I made this exactly the same way as the Nothing But Tea Smokey Souchong I wrote up yesterday. I strongly suspect these two are the same tea – both excellent, though, and among my top favourites.
Preparation
I have been having this iced everyday since I got it. After experimenting, I think I found the perfect way of preparing it;
4tsp Sticky Toffee Pudding
1.5 litres water @ 205F
Steep for 6 mins
Let cool, then refridgerate
I definitely think this is best with a little sweetener – I usually add simple syrup after it has cooled.
My local Whittard of Chelsea brought this out yesterday while I was in there, so I got a pouch to try. The dry leaf scent on this is very strong and ery sweet – like sticky toffee pudding, actually! Unfortunately, this doesn’t translate to the steeped aroma and it just smells like plain black tea. Hot, this doesn’t really taste like much, just black tea with the slightest hint of caramel nuttiness.
But iced, this is AWESOME! So good! It is a very sweet tea without additions and cold I can definitely taste the caramel/toffee part of this. I just brewed up a gallon and can’t wait to get started!
Gosh, that sounds interesting. I’ll have to try and remember this the next time I’m in the UK. I’ve only been moderately pleased with Whittards, but I’ve definitely had worse in my life so they’ve managed to hold my interest to a certain degree. (If I recall correctly, they do a pretty awesome strawberry black as well.)
I agree, their strawberry black is pretty good. They have brought out some new teas recently, and I do think they are a better quality than their previous teas.
Their english rose was defintiely a load of tosh, so if they can top that, that’s good enough for me. :D Come to think of it, the boyfriend is going to Suffolk in a couple of weeks, most likely. Maybe I should send a shopping list with him just in case he happens to get the opportunity. (On the other hand he’ll probably just remind me that we have so much tea at the moment that I ran out of tins…)
I really, really like this tea. It’s very full-bodied and Assam-y and it smells a bit like Ovaltine, which I suppose makes sense given the strong maltiness to the flavour. I’ve been drinking this with sugar to counterbalance the slight astringency of this tea. It’s a great everyday tea, I got a few bags as a sample and I’m definitely going to have to buy more once I’ve gotten through them.
Let’s face it, it’s not good.
The rose flavour doesn’t stand out all that much, the taste is indeterminately fruity more than anything else, and the fruit flavour overpowers the tea. And every now and then, a really odd, artificial taste that I can’t place comes through. I’ve drank this four or five times, but now it just sits at the back of the cupboard because I really don’t like it at all.
Smells like wood smoke. Delicious. I got 4 infusions out of it, and the smoky flavour held out quite well for the first three. The smokiness isn’t overpowering though, there’s a good balance between smoke and tea flavours.
Drank this as my morning tea today. I noticed a slightly liqourice-like note right at the end of the sip. It adds an interesting note to the tea. I think I might have oversteeped a bit though, as it was quite bitter, but not undrinkable. I will have to be careful with thid in the future.