15678 Tasting Notes
From this weekend!
Sipped on a pot of this while looking for some character inspiration this morning! This is one of my favourite blends that Anne has created; it’s such a beautifully silky and smooth mouthfeel with the most decadent and creamy wintergreen flavor. I feel like it would be so easy for this profile to come out tasting like toothpaste, but it never does!
Sidenote: if any of my fellow D&D loving tea nerds out there have ever played a Warlock before, please hit me up! I’d love some tips with balancing stats and spell selection!
Tea Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/ChPhqanurNN/
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tK_eHym3Ms0
Gongfu!
I love how syrupy the liquor of this black tea is even from the first steep, and with practically zero astringency save for the faintest little hint after the swallow. It perfectly suits the notes of melted caramel, perfectly golden and toasty sweet potatoes, and slightly tangy cooked red fruit notes – like a pomegranate molasses kind of flavour but a little less distinct than that. The later session evolved into more of a raisin-y fruity note with more of a malty rye bread kind of vibe alongside the sweet potato that remains a consistent note throughout. There’s something about the way these flavours have such brightness and thickness to them while dancing across the palate that just feels special!
Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/ChNSNKHu6ny/
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OF7N9pzM7C8
This came in my August subscription box this month.
Usually I get an advanced email from Tea Runners where I can choose to swap teas in the box if I want, but this was the first month in about a year where I wasn’t given that option. I don’t want to complain since I get my box for free, but I did miss having the option to choose. It’s maybe a good thing too though because I probably would have swapped this one out of my box because I’ve historically been fairly underwhelmed by jasmine greens – I would have just assumed this wouldn’t be my cup of tea. Pun intended.
That said, I cracked open the little sample bag and the dry leaf aroma immediately had me going “Oh, I have misjudged you!”. It smells like jasmine, yes, but also beautifully of soft and citrusy lemon myrtle and aromatic floral orange blossoms. So fresh and almost dewy! I steeped up a cup immediately, and it was very good.
Definitely more of an orange blossom profile than a jasmine one in my opinion and I super spot on orange blossom at that! It’s not a flavour that’s easy to find well executed in teas, so the fact it was so natural and fresh tasting with the perfect amount of body really blew me away. I thought the jasmine came though in the finish, but even it was on its best behavior with a softer and more delicate note rather than the heavy and kind of perfume-y quality that jasmine can sometimes take. The natural sweetness level was quite pleasant, and I also really liked the light top notes of bright lemon that some of the other ingredients contributed.
As I mentioned in another tasting note earlier tonight, I’ve not slept well this week and I’ve been dealing with a lot of migraines as a result of that insomnia. I had an awful one all day today, but by the end of this cup I was so relaxed and at peace that I hadn’t realized my migraine had gone away sometime after those first sips.
Just… yes to this tea.
Sipdown (1802)!
I’m drinking this one right now and it tastes good but it also tastes reeeaaalllyyyy similar to some of the other Teeccino flavours I’ve tried and I feel like that’s maybe a bad thing since I actually haven’t tried anything vanilla flavoured yet other than this one. To clarify, similar in a sense other than just the overlap of base ingredients that these blends all share.
That said, I usually think of “Vanilla” as the more generic flavour that people often pick for their routine/ritually consumed food or beverage flavour. Like, if you were the kind of person to drink a cup of Teeccino daily in place of a cup of coffee, French Vanilla is one of the flavours I would feels that makes the most sense to be true about. It’s also another classic in terms of coffee flavours – something that wouldn’t make you even bat an eye if you saw it as an option in a coffee shop…
So, it’s also maybe a good thing that this doesn’t exactly stand out? Neutrally good tasting could be, well, good. I don’t know – thinking about it tonight is breaking my brain a little bit…
If I’m being honest, this tea specifically is the reason that I placed my last 52Teas order. It’s one of my favourites that Anne has ever blended, and when the oppertunity for more popped up I had to stock up. Sometimes when you’ve been building up the memory of a tea in your head for a while, it just doesn’t live up to the pedestal that it’s been put on. In this case, I made my first cup and one of my first thoughts was “wow, the pedestal wasn’t tall enough”! It was actually so much better than I had been remembering it. Such an incredibly cola flavour and a surprising effervescence to the flavour as well!
I feel like a lot of the peach teas I’ve steeped up as of late have been very much on the sweet and juicy or tart side of things, and I like that profile a lot but it’s very nice to see the other sides of peach and the more cooked and jammy stonefruit notes in this blend with the warming spice mix and the medium bodied black base were a welcome change of pace for me! I got allspice, nutmeg, and cinnamon more than anything and I thought it was so delicious and autumnal!
I think the only thing I would maybe comment based on this first cupping was that the peach could be a little thicker in flavour. Not stronger, I liked the balance of flavour. The mouthfeel/body level was maybe just a smidge thin for me for a preserve/jam inspired tea profile.
Cold Brew Sipdown (1803)!
My last hot cup of this wasn’t a pleasant experience, but I seem to be back on the foot of finding this really tasty – so that’s a good thing! It’s very juicy and orange heavy, which is what I want from this kind of profile. Really lovely top notes of sweet blood orange with a bit of tart hibiscus. The mid sip feels round and coating on the palate with honey undertones from the base, and then in the finish I get a lot of the rooibos with distinct honey and hazelnut notes. Very clean finish.
Cold Brew!
The hot cup of this was really nice, and the profile seems like it would translate well to cold brewing. However, I don’t think this one was a great fit. Mostly the thing that really got to me was how much more the coconut came through both in taste and texture. I hate the feeling of coconut fat in the mouthfeel of teas, and this was hard to get over. It’s definitely NOT bad tasting overall though – just very different. The mango was a bit stronger, but both it and the lychee were preeetttyyyyy thin and that just let more grassy green tea poke though which is not my vibe.
I finished my cold brew, but I’m sticking with hot cups moving forward.
I was a little worried about this one because the dry leaf visual sorta just looks intensely like finally chopped up cinnamon pieces with very little else to contribute flavour and the aroma is very aggressively cinnamon in the “red hot” kind of way that doesn’t exactly translate to cinnamon buns, which should have more of a bakery-style woody cinnamon note. However, steeped up I found myself impressed with the surprising amount of balance that was present! It’s still definitely majority cinnamon, but I think it would feel wrong is that wasn’t the case for a cinnamon bun profile. Plus, despite the smell coming off as red-hot cinnamon, the taste was _definitely the right type for this flavour direction. More warming with a softer sweetness. Very, very bakery.
There’s other things in the ingredients too like moringa and orange, but ultimately I don’t taste them at all. I think it would be weird if I did taste them but it also then begs the question of why they’re included. If I had to guess, the moringa is probably just to be able to loop in that superfood buzz word and give more of a wellness feeling to a generally perceived as decadent profile. The orange, on the other hand, really does puzzle me.
Still probably my favourite flavour carried by Synergy!
There’s this big wave in food/beverage trends right now with late 90s and early 2000s nostalgia inspired flavours and one in particular that’s seeing a lot of emphasis put on it is grape. I actually sought out this kombucha while shopping because I found myself caught in that weird space of craving a thing directly because you recently saw it/were reading about it. Hell, I even went back to look at my past tasting notes for this and my very first time trying it I compared it to grape soda – how very “2000s Nostalgia” of me even back then!
But yeah, it was a yummy kombucha.
