Boston Blend

Thank you Ashmanra for this lovely sample tea!

Cranberry and Almond flavors it says in the Harney & Son’s notes.
Fall is coming. In fact, this is the LAST DAY OF SUMMER!

Am I the only one who packed up the tank tops, shorts and white jeans this weekend? It’s a frigid 84 degrees out ;) so I thought I’d get ready for the cold weather with a splendid Fall tea.

Since this was my morning wake-up tea, I added cream and sweetening.
Some flavored tea’s speak to me. “Add a little something, Bonnie, you know you want to.” And I can’t resist.
(There are tea’s that I never add anything to ever, ever, ever!)

I liked the cranberry flavor which was just like chewing on the plump dry cranberry’s that I used to get from Trader Joe’s. Tart and sweet. The almond didn’t taste like almond in a distinct way. I couldn’t tell it was there as a nutty flavor, but it carried the cranberry along by giving depth to the tea so that it didn’t taste too fruity or thin. What I’m trying to say poorly is, the almond gave a cranberry chewy granola flavor to the tea. There.

Come on Fall! We’re ready for the display of color!

Noooo, I just spilled a cup’s worth from the pouch. This is the fourth time drinking this though so I already know that I’ll need to purchase more in the future, anyway.

Cranberry, you say. The dry leaf smells more like raspberry to my nose. Like a chocolate raspberry cordial.

Simply put, it tastes like it too. I haven’t tried it with additives yet but only because I’m enjoying it so much black. As this cools down, the almond comes out a little more. A perfect autumn cup on a cool, rainy day.

One thing I especially appreciate about H&S teas so far is that they’re not overly sweet. Many of my flavoured teas have simply been too sweet for me lately, and I’ve been craving unflavoured teas, especially my holy grail genmaicha, but I don’t have any in the house, nor have I found any in this city yet. Boston at least is more balanced in the world of sweetness.

Have always wanted to try this one; Nicole gave me the opportunity. Without peeking at reviews, I remembered there was cranberry, but I couldn’t put my finger on the “other” I was tasting. Other is almond! And really, really tasty almond at that.

These are two flavors that can be used in interpreted really badly—way too tart on the cranberry, way too bitter on the almond, but this is a pretty perfect representation of both. I think I may need to try some on ice!

I can finally smell and taste again, yay! That means it’s time to delve into the treats that SimplyJenW sent me recently. I decided to start with Boston, based solely on it’s delicious dry smell. I get a distinct rich fruity smell, not much of a tea base underneath, but that’s fine. The liquor once steeped is a rich brown with a red/amber tinge…One of the colours I’d expect from a black tea.

The steeped smell is very rich and creamy, very thick smelling (if that’s even possible). No ‘tea’ smell, but an almost vanilla scent in there, reminiscent of vanilla comoro. I get a fruity smell, but nothing identifiably cranberry.

First sips yield a creamy fruity tea, with a hint of amaretto style almond aftertaste and a very slight tinge of bitterness. I gave this around 2 minutes 45 seconds, to avoid over-steeping. As the tea cools, the richness I initially experienced thinned out a bit, but the berry flavour became more dominant. I don’t know that I could identify it as cranberry, but it’s pretty hard to capture a flavour that specifically. This reminds me of another cranberry black tea I have from Joy’s Teaspoon called Crannyberry…though it’s been a while, so that might not be a true recollection.

All in all, this is really nice. Definitely an enjoyable cuppa, it seems a wonderfully absent-minded sort of tea. The black tea flavour continues to come out more strongly as the cup cools, and I’m enjoying that right now. I’m still in a straight black tea rut and really feeling that, but this is a great fruity alternative. Losing that slight hint of almond, but the fruit and tea flavours are more than enough for me!

Thanks again, SimplyJenW! I can’t wait to try the rest of my lovelies!

lol I haven’t touched this tea because I have an intense hatred for a certain Boston sports team, especially its captain, so…I associate this tea with them. And you know, how that I think about it, I should have tried this when there was a lockout and I couldn’t care at all but now I am ready to get my hate back in full gear. VROOM VROOM.

Right, so I don’t mind cranberry but it’s definitely a flavor I won’t grab over other berries especially. But I’ll drink it…almond, on the other hand I actively try to avoid. Now I love to eat almonds. But I can’t do sweet almond, and I especially can’t do it in a tea. The best I have ever done with sweet almond is that I can put amaretto in pancakes. That is all. I seriously have a bottle of amaretto just for that and I rarely make pancakes. I also have no idea why I bought it in the first place. Probably some other recipe.

This does smell fantastic in the bag though. I got my friend a tin and it was even better in such a large amount.

So it definitely is not in your face cranberry at all, like I was hoping it might be. The almond flavor mixes in with the cranberry about mid-sip. At first it’s just absolutely disgusting like Zdeno Chara, but towards the end of the sip it is really reminiscent of granola. But getting to granola takes strong taste buds. I think maybe if the cranberry was just a bit more tart, I might be able to ignore that almond flavoring, but it’s not happening.

The more I try the more repulsive it tastes. I hate you almond.

PS thank you for this sample, Alphakitty

Last of the three tonight from Alphakitty! (Ok, I lie, I brought down a couple others, but in this series it’s the last of the three :D)

Ok… now this one smells like chocolate raspberry too! My nose is so confused! Doesn’t help that I seem to have developed a bad case of the hiccups in the last few minutes. Bugger. Does not make it easy to concentrate on flavours.

Well, whatever this one is, it’s definitely my favourite! It’s smooth and without astringency, with a tasty fruity flavour. I want to again say there’s chocolate, but it could easily just be the black tea. Ok…. time to look!

Huh, cranberry and almond. I wouldn’t have guessed it, but the cranberry definitely fits – I was getting a tart sort of fruit, which is why I went with raspberry. Not really getting the almond, but that could be coming out as a nice creaminess. Given that there isn’t chocolate in this blend, I have to say that there’s a great base tea here! And this is definitely my favourite of the three, probably the one I’d most likely seek out again as the flavour is distinct and blends wonderfully with the tea. Thanks again Alphakitty!

I am a big fan of Harney & Sons and I like their Paris and Florence teas. I ordered Boston! I forgot that the tea has cranberry flavors. When I opened the tin I was overwhelmed by an aroma that was not entirely pleasant: i put my finger on it: Paregoric soaked in cherry and stored in a humidor! I was a bit surprised by the intensity of this aroma and after sitting with it for a few minutes, I had to conclude: this is a concoction of paregoric, cherries, and some cigar tobacco.

Steeped, I smell the cranberry quite clearly. And the enticement of the paregoric has gone, taking with it my opium dreams (I was of the generation where mothers used paregoric as a catch-all medicine for their children—indeed I can remember trotting off to the drug store to buy her a bottle of paregoric and a package of Parliament cigarettes all for less than 50 cents).

So aside from being a blast to the past, Boston Tea proves to be a reasonably strong, robust black tea with cranberry aroma and flavor. I cannot pick on on the almond flavor specifically, but I do recommend this tea. After the moments of strangeness, the tea itself offers a generous tea/cranberry experience which is much more authentic than some of the other cranberry flavored teas I’ve sampled before. I think this would be a great tea to serve with a holiday dinner and a good tea to keep in stock. The aftertaste is delightfully cranberry too.

Au fond, my only disappointment is that the paregoric seems to have been a temporary illusion! I could also see mixing this tea 50/50 with Florence to sample the result.

Good morning Steepsterites,

This fine Saturday we are starting out with a gift from Dinosara and it’s another one of those Russian Roulette Brewings. Steep first, look it up second. Consequently my intuition landed me in a spot of trouble as it made me pick a tea which isn’t really a breakfast-suitable tea at all. At least, I would have been more likely to have it in the afternoon.

I was rescued, however, by that fact that once I tasted it, it didn’t seem quite so anachronistic at all. For some reason a tea with fruit and almonds in it manages to work quite well with our ritual weekend pancakes with apple bits in.

The aroma is largely almonds, I think, and then the cranberry underneath that adding a non-descript mahogany coloured fruity aspect to it. Bear in mind though that this is an almond aroma. It does not in any way, shape or form resemble marzipan, for which I am grateful. (I love marzipan, as well as just about any other type of confectionary (nearly) that you can think off, but I rather doubt it would have worked in this particular instance.)

This is one of those tea that does that funny switcheroo thing as it cools down, too. Now that I’m halfway through the cup and it’s heading towards Lukewarm Lane, it’s the cranberries who’s doing the driving and the almonds relocated to the backseat. I quite like it when a flavoured tea does that. It’s like you get the best of both, even if one does wish it could do so while the tea was still slightly warmer.

And that’s just the aroma.

In the flavour (which is a muddly orange, I think because of the almonds) it’s rather more even. I can find almonds and cranberries with equal ease, but I can’t really find the tea base very easily. Can’t be that interesting then, can it?

It’s very smooth and extremely well flavoured. Slightly heavy and super suitable for autumn. Thank you hugely, Dinosara! This was awesome!

Thank you to Nicole and Batrachoid for these samples!

This seems like a fall tea with cranberry and almonds. And since it is almost fall, time to try this!

Upon first sip, I get a bit of tart cranberry with almond and the black tea base coming through. The cranberry isn’t too tart though, just enough for it to be like real cranberries. I feel like I would want the almond to be just a little bit more prevalant here.

This is a great blend!

Mmmmmmmmm. This one tastes of cranberries and warmth. Wonderful with milk and sugar (and digestive biscuits). I could just picture being in Boston all bundled up in a tam and mittens and boots, stopping into Trident Booksellers to get a novel and sit in the cafe and read (and admire my vintage dress that I bought at Oona’s earlier in the day). Yes, I have fond memories of Boston :)

Ashmanra said that this is a more solitary tea (and Cranberry Autumn a more social one) and I couldn’t agree more. This is certainly the cozy one full of books and college campuses and window seats and wool, not the tromping through an apple orchard with your dear ones then baking a pie with them and making dinner too, chatting all the while (that’s Cranberry Autumn).

The flavored teas I best like are very evocative for me – they make me remember childhood, travel, seminal experiences, forevermoments. This tea is very very very evocative for me. Thank you Mr. Harney! and thank you ashmanra for sending me some! I love it!

I would go curl up and reread Leonard Cohen’s novel Beautiful Losers (the book I bought at Trident in Boston) but I am in the thick of Miss Read’s Thrush Green and can’t quite tear myself away!

Thanks to Azzrian for this sampler!

This is an interesting blend, tart & tangy. It was my first cup of the day, & the sample Azz sent me was generous enough that I can try a 2nd cup later, which will be lightly sweetened or or cold brewed…still not sure which!

Now I’m off to meet a friend at the London Tea Room!
Enjoy the day, everyone!

Thanks to ashmanra I received a sample of this to try. I decided to have this as an alternative to the cranberry autumn this morning. This is a very fragrant cup. I love the nutty almond scent and sweet and tart cranberries. I will have to pick up a tin of this next order. I have a feeling I shouldn’t sample too many more of Harney’s black teas as I have liked all the flavored ones I have tried as of yet, and I can’t fit that many tasty teas in my cupboard. I like the briskness of the black tea bases and the realness of the fruits and flavorings. They do tea well!

How could I not drink Boston today? It’s the first new tea I’m trying from the Harney & Sons order, and even though it’s a black, I’m drinking it at 8pm. Oh well. Respect.

Dry, it smells exactly like cranberry juice. Yum. Cranberry juice is my favorite.

It also tastes very cranberry-y, but a little less tart and in your face. I suppose the almond comes through a bit more, with a light nuttiness to balance out the tart berry. It’s a very cozy blend, I can imagine it would be fantastic for when the weather just starts to get cool and you have to pull the sweaters out of the closet. Of course, it’s still delicious no matter what time of year, I am certainly enjoying my cup (and now, my second steep).

I’m excited to try the rest of my Harney & Sons samples, but kind of hoping that they all let me down. I love these teas so far, but dang, they are a pain to order from.

Dear god, is it it true??!! Could there possibly be a cranberry-flavoured tea out there that doesn’t taste like it’s loaded with hibiscus?!

This tea is berry-flavoured with just a hint of sourness and it actually tastes like real cranberries, though they keep the flavour subtle. I’m also picking up the hint of almonds other people have been talking about, and while it seems like it would be mis-matched with the cranberry the two flavours actually blend together quite well.

I got to try this tea from the “Here is hoping traveling teabox”.

One sniff and I knew I would LOVE IT. Once brewed it seemed suprisingly familiar even though I had never tried it before…then I realized. The Tea Gathering House Blend (http://steepster.com/teas/the-tea-gathering/23725-tg-house-blend) which I LOVE is the same tea. I know that the owner of the Tea Gathering sources some of her tea from Harney. I am certain this is the same tea.

I do adore this tea no matter what it is named. It is a yummy almond-y cranberry confection. Yum!

So yesterday while I was at Harney in Soho I picked up a few ounces of some loose leaf teas, since I love being able to buy just 2oz at a time, and to not have to spend the extra on a tin as well. I was trying not to spend too much, or to add too much to my stash before I clean some stuff out of it, particularly since I’ll be leaving the country for a month soon! So I only purchased a few, but one thing I did do was pick up 2oz of Boston. Now, I’ve never tried Boston, but it definitely seems like a tea I would like (cranberries plus almonds? yes please!), and at ~$20/lb, 2oz was only $2.50… considering their samples from the website are $2 and way less than 2oz, I’d say it was a steal. Plus, you can’t order a sample of Boston from the website, so it seemed like an all around win.

The dry leaf smells powerfully, incredibly like cranberry. Even when she opened the tin in the store to get some out, I could smell it strongly from across the counter. I don’t get many other aromas from the dry leaf, but as it sits here steeping the lovely scent of almonds is starting to waft my way. When I stick my nose over it, it’s still primarily cranberry, but that almond note is still there… it reminds me perhaps of a cranberry almond tart. I think I can also detect the black tea base; it’s not strong, but there’s definitely something there that reminds me that this is tea.

This one is a definite yum, and I’m glad I bought it! The first notes are bright, tart cranberry, but those quickly are joined by thick, sweet almond that leaves a decidedly sweet aftertaste. This is an almond extract/amaretto/marzipan flavor, and I don’t get anything exceptionally nutty like eating a raw almond, but that’s just fine with me. Ashmanra mentioned a biscuity marzipan flavor in this; I agree, and it’s now making me think of Coquelicot Gourmand by Dammann Freres, except with berries and not flowers. Definitely awesome. I don’t taste the black tea base distinctly, but that’s also fine, and I think it definitely adds a slightly roastiness that adds to the baked almond-cranberry tart flavor. This tea definitely surprised me, I didn’t expect to love it this much, but there you go. Another score for Harney.

I am loving this this morning! It’s all amaretto with the tartness of the cranberry coming at the end of the sip. Yum. This is definitely taking the edge off this insanely cold weather we’re having.

Thank you to Jes for this sample!

This is a very fragrant tea. I couldn’t find measurement on the website, so I assumed the sample was for one cup.
It’s definitely caffeinated, rich in flavour. I’m not keen on the cranberry, it tastes almost medicinal. I can definitely see how it would appeal to some though. It’s very well balance and smooth. You can taste almonds and vanilla as well.

Steep Information:
Amount: 4 teaspoons
Water: 1000ml water @ 212°F
Tool: Breville One-Touch Tea Maker BTM800XL
Steep Time: 2:30 minutes
Served: Hot

Tasting Notes:
Dry Leaf Smell:
AmazonV: fruity, apple? berry?
MilitiaJim: The dry tea smells like strawberries, which is a bummer. (He does not like them.)
Steeped Tea Smell:
AmazonV: fruity, mulled cider?
MilitiaJim: The brewed tea smells more like apricots
Flavor:
AmazonV: almond, fruity, black tea finish
MilitiaJim: It has light fruit and almond flavor.
Body: Medium
Aftertaste: astringent
Liquor: dark amber

It doesn’t taste the same as when we sampled it in the store, I wonder how they brewed it up? The tea is still very delicious and enjoyable. It makes me think of some kind of holiday cookie.

Post-Steep Additives: German rock sugar – more fruit flavor.

Pictures: http://amazonv.blogspot.com/2010/12/harney-and-sons-loose-leaf-black-tea.html

Today is a bit crazy. A final all morning, work from 12:30-5, and my on campus job from 6-midnight. All while trying to survive in Mafia, which is basically a campus-wide excuse to run around shooting each other with nerf guns. So I KNEW I had to start the day strong with some black tea. This was the first one I came to, so I decided to give it a try.

Unfortunately, my travel mug is a bit soapy. Not too much, but its there. I know that’s spoiling the flavor, but I did get a bit of cranberry as it cooled.