This is the first loose leaf I’ve had in a long time. That’s kind of depressing! Anyway, we went to a coffee shop in downtown Charleston for breakfast this morning and they had a handful of loose Rishi teas. Of course, being morning and the fact that I am very predictable, I picked the Earl Grey.
As usual with this kind of situation, it wasn’t my optimal tasting conditions so I’m giving it a rating but I’m not sure if it reflects exactly rating I would give it under different circumstances. Basically, this was a pretty tasty Earl but it didn’t really stick out as particularly mind-blowing. I noticed the tea base as a bit different, and looking at the description now I see it was a Yunnan, which I tend to enjoy. It’s apparently a bit polarizing, probably because the bergamot is pretty strong, but as I’ve mentioned before a strong bergamot flavor doesn’t usually taste perfumy or musty to me. It started to get a tad bitter toward the bottom of the pot where the little bits of leaves had been steeping for a while (the glass infuser in the pot at the coffee shop had fairly large holes), but never so bad that I couldn’t finish it. A pretty decent Earl, would drink again.
