The Green Earl Grey is my favourite Fortnum & Mason tea, but their Christmas Tea is perhaps the worst tea I have ever tried . . . ever!
The tea base itself is fine, but the ingredients are listed as “mulled wine flavouring”. Now, this could mean spices to flavour wine to make mulled wine, but I suspect there is actually some sort of “wine” flavouring because there is a revolting vinegar-like taste somewhere in the mix. This is so repellent and unpalatable that I felt ill after drinking it and I couldn’t get the wine flavour out of my mouth. I ended up getting rid of all 200gms of the tea.
On the plus side, the special edition tin is beautiful – I love the contours of the tin and the old world lettering and gold print. When I was a kid, we used to receive tins of biscuits, tea, chocolates, etc. from Harrods and Fortnum & Mason and holding this tin brings the memories flooding back. We had kept the tins but they were all thrown out when I had lived overseas for 10 years, so the only reason I bought this tea was to own a good, quality Christmas tea tin that would last for decades. Initially, I had hoped to find a unique blend of tea for the season in time for Christmas but now it will have to wait until Christmas 2013.
It is definitely an unusual tea, so it is worth trying if only for that reason. Perhaps someone will like the tea and can post a review to counterpoint mine.
