Sipdown, 178. Thanks to yssah for the sample. This is the last of the LIT samples that yssah sent me.
This smell pretty innocuous dry; mostly like bergamot. I couldn’t tell if it was black, green, or a black/green blend, but the leaf was pretty dark so I went with just boiling water. That may have been a rather sizeable mistake. The smell of the brewed tea was, quite frankly, horrible. I can’t even describe how, although there were some weird floral notes and perhaps a bit of smoke. I took a sip anyway to try; amazingly it wasn’t actually bitter but that smell was too much for me. Not sure what yssah meant about “interesting” in her tasting note, but I’ve had jasmine earl greys before and the didn’t combine like this. Not rating this one because of the off steep temp for the leaf, but I am not sure that that’s responsible for everything here.
