Jasmine tea just doesn’t seem like a morning tea to me, but that’s because it’s usually a green or white base. I haven’t had many jasmine black teas (perhaps just one?) but the idea definitely intrigues me. Luckily I got this sample from SimplyJenW to try!
The dry leaf has lots of jasmine blossoms in it, and smells pleasantly first of a slightly grainy black tea and then of a lovely sweet jasmine. Steeped, that weird blend of jasmine and black tea comes out… yeah, jasmine and black together are just so weird in my mind! They don’t seem to work properly together, I don’t know why. One thing is I feel like the black tea gives the jasmine a more herbaceous rather than a sweet quality.
However the flavor of this one comes off better than the scent to me. There is a surprising sweetness here, which I think is coming from the black tea base, actually… it has that character. There is a honeyed note to the base, a bit malty. But honestly I think I’d rather have this tea without the jasmine! The jasmine is light and pleasant, but it again has that weird herbaceous quality. It’s the same kind of thing I get from jasmine-vanilla blends that I’m not a fan of. I guess in those blends it might also be the jasmine interacting with the black tea (since those are often black/green blends). Then again, I’ve had other jasmine black/green blends that work out for me, so who knows. I do actually enjoy this one, though (because the odd qualities aren’t too odd for me in this tea). Thanks for the opportunity to try it! After a couple of shots I do feel like jasmine and black tea is not something I really need to seek out in the future.
