Grace Send Message

This tea is a perfect example of why being pretentious about the teas you buy isn’t necessarily advantageous. This tea cost something like a couple of euros for a box of 25 (fannings) bags, but in my books, the taste simply can’t be argued with. I never make lattes with or sweeten green tea (in fact, I think this was the first time ever), but I thought the incredibly rich vanilla flavour here called for it.

It was probably the best tea latte I’ve ever had.

I didn’t know that something could balance that richness of flavour with a kind of airy, ethereal quality. And the smell is just divine from start to finish. I wish I could put it into words. I love vanilla so much, and this has not disappointed me one bit! Oh, it’s good.

In a way, I have to admit that when I see flavour in tea ingredients, I feel a bit like the company’s cheating. But it’s pretty commonplace, and how a company uses the flavours involved can make all the difference, and show a company’s skill. With cheap tea, it feels like a necessary evil, in any case. I’d probably prefer teas to be sweetened solely through having bits of plants in them, but with a lot of teas, that isn’t the case, and with flavour like this, I feel like I can’t complain. This tea actually contains both vanilla flavour and vanilla. I don’t know if that’s how it has the taste it does, but holy cow!

You can’t re-steep this, but I guess that’s the standard thing for teas made from fannings. I guess I hadn’t really thought about that fact before today because I used to use the used tea bag together with a fresh one to brew a new cup of tea, which I didn’t do with this, because I’m keeping it to one caffeinated beverage a day now (This hasn’t really applied to second steepings of the Kusmi teas I’ve reviewed lately, because you can effectively re-use the leaves again if you steep them for a longer time , or just boil them for a while, which really didn’t work here.) The second steeping still tasted nice, but it didn’t really taste like a proper tea latte or anything.

If you’re looking for something that’s a complex green with vanilla woven subtly in, this will probably not please you. I don’t find it to be a fake-tasting, loud vanilla, but it’s definitely an assertive one, and is there against a backdrop of simple, single note, dry grass-tasting green tea. That might sound weirdly unappetising, but personally, vanilla and grass and two of my favourite smells (that’s the case for a lot of people, isn’t it?), so really, it makes a lot of sense.

I think sometimes tastes or scents don’t necessarily need to challenge you. Lately, I’ve mostly been trying a lot of these Kusmi teas that have a lot of flavour combinations that I hadn’t had before, and a lot of black tea mixes. Before a few months ago, I hadn’t even drank a cup of black tea in 20 years, nor had I had teas with as many flavour elements as some of them have. This tea is unlike those, and in a way I’m glad about that. I think in a latte, it’s something that could be considered a crowd pleaser—I think this could impress someone who thinks they don’t really like tea, a veteran cappuccino drinker, or someone who just likes sweet, fragrant things. I think milky, sweet things appeal to pretty much everyone, and maybe it’s just because I don’t like coffee, but I think this does a way better job of that than a regular latte does.

It’s tea that smells like cookies and ice cream and doesn’t taste cheap and fake. Do you really need convincing?