I have guilt squared! Just dropped the kitties off at the animal hospital for spaying, ear tatooing and vaccination. Luna was looking at me as I left, betrayal painted across her little face. Will be picking them up again between 2 and 3 o’clock this afternoon and we’ll see if they hate me horribly then. In the meantime I must have something to soothe my frazzled nerves.
This is the last of the three I ordered from J&J, the three in my cupboard from them that I have left to try are the three free samples they included. I’m not sure why I bought this one, actually, given my reservations towards the Grey family. I think it’s some sort of thing where that’s a kind of tea that I have decided that I would like to like, so I can’t quite get myself to completely ignore it. The straight up Earl Greys are not the problem. It’s the variations that attract me. This one, I think, had me at ‘Girlie’.
Now the aroma of the leaves does indeed very much resemble the description by J&J, as ‘a boudoir in a cup’. I can easily pick out the bergamot, and lemon is not hard to find either, given the huge chunks of dried lemon in the leaves. And not just lemon peel as has been seen before by other companies. This is the first time I’ve actually seen actual dried lemon pieces in tea leaves. Peel and fruit bits and all!
Secondly there is vanilla and rosebuds, giving the aroma a sweet and floral aspect respectively. These two are what actually provides the majority of the girlie quality for me. It doesn’t smell quite pink, but we’re definitely in the lightly purple area here.
All in all, the aroma is quite pleasant, if a bit heady.
The flavour is very smooth and citrus-y. The vanilla is giving it all a creamy sort of feel to it and the bergamot is not too strong. It’s very clearly present, but it’s not overwhelming and it seems quite fresh and crispy. I think it’s the lemon that’s giving it that lift. It seems to me that I have a tendency to enjoy the Grey family more in general if there is either smoke or lemon involved. Perhaps one of these days I should try to make myself a classic EG with a slice of lemon in the cup.
I’m not sure what the rosebuds do here. I can definitely find some floral notes in the tea, but that might as well just be bergamot top notes. I can’t tell one kind of floral from another, so I can’t be certain of this at all. I choose to believe it comes from the rosebuds in this case.
This is a tea with a whole lot of stuff going on in it. Bergamot AND lemon AND vanilla AND floral rosebuds. It’s a very busy cup, which I find somewhat confusing to drink. It’s hard to get a proper grasp on the flavour as a whole, I think.
On the other hand, if it didn’t have so much going on in it, I’m not sure I would have cared for it much. A lot of these things are things I normally wouldn’t care much for but here are evening each other out in a pleasant way.
I think I will rather enjoy this tin. I’m not sure I’ll buy more of it after it’s gone though.
