I really haven’t been drinking a lot of flavored teas lately, besides flavored matcha. Weird. Well I finally went to the post office during their opening hours this morning so that I could get the packages that were too big to fit in my (actually very large) PO box (although seriously, there is no reason that two ounces of tea, or a small tin of matcha, need huge cardboard boxes to ship in), and so I finally got to pick up my order from Della Terra. I’ve been curious about Della Terra teas since everyone has been talking about them on here, but never that driven to order from them. But then they had a 50% off halloween teas and I ordered two off that list since the price was right.
I have not spent a lot of time looking for a perfect pumpkin tea, but am pretty certain that it is a flavor I will be fairly picky about because I love pumpkin everything. I go pumpkin crazy this time of year. The dry leaf on this one is powerfully pumpkin pie. Spiced, but not spicy in a chai way, and definitely pumpkiny. Steeped, I smell more fall-themed spices, particularly some woody cinnamon, a bit of pie crust, and what may be some pumpkin hanging out in the background.
The flavor is pretty nice, with some good levels of spices and a decent creamy pumpkin-ness. It’s just, the black tea is so weak. It’s like it has hardly any flavor at all. At one point this would never have bothered me, but now it does. I can just imagine how much more delicious this would be with a lovely, rich, black base underneath. I could try to steep it for longer, but I fear that would just bring out undesirable black tea qualities. I may actually try to add some richer black tea to this the next time I have it and see what the result is. Even so this is pretty tasty with nicely balanced pumpkin flavoring.
