Well, I’m back from Europe, though I’m leaving again for Chicago tomorrow for a college reunion. In any case, choosing a tea from the many I brought back was an almost paralyzing decision, and while I initially wanted to start out with one of my fancy French teas, circumstances dictated that I needed something else. I needed a black tea to combat afternoon jetlag, and I needed a tea without too much going on since I’d be doing other things at the same time. This one was a natural choice.
I’ve been casually looking for an almond tea that said almond to me in the way that I love, namely marzipan or almond extract, but I had yet to find one that really was right. When I was in London I stopped at this tea shop, and when I smelled this tea I knew I had to buy it. The dry leaf smells powerfully, amazingly, like the freshest marzipan or perhaps the aroma of a bottle of almond extract. Interestingly this tea company had a different plain almond black tea that smelled much different, but this one was specifically marzipan: what I was looking for.
Brewed, the aroma changed quite a bit and the marzipan aroma wasn’t quite as all-powerful as it was in the dry leaf. The black tea base became a real partner in the aroma, and this was born out in the taste. It’s a nice, strong black tea with a very almondy, marzipanny flavor. There’s also a kind of generally nutty note underlying things as if you were acutally eating a nut, probably from the almond pieces included in the blend. The tea was very slightly bitter, but it wasn’t too much. I don’t usually sweeten my teas, but I have a feeling that a bit of sweetener would probably really turn this into a marzipan bomb.
Overall, I’m very pleased with this tea, and I feel like it’s a nice blend of the marzipan and black tea flavors without being too much of one or the other. A good purchase!
