This tea always surprises me by being more pleasant than I anticipate. Of course, I anticipate it being something like drinking Pledge so that might not be saying much.
Things I have learned with this tea: It is too light for milk. Sugar is optional. It doesn’t really get bitter. The dry leaf smells horrid. The tea itself tastes pretty good. It doesn’t scream lemon so much as softly whisper “I’m not just plain tea. Promise.” It’s too light in body for a happy-making morning tea but ultimately it works.
I normally make my tea right before I leave for work, but this morning DH had to leave early, so I did it right after getting out of bed. Not the best plan since I was basically still asleep, just ambulatory.
The choice of this tea today was influenced by 2 things: 1) I didn’t have it yesterday and 2) it was on top of the front stack of tea. Yes, I have very demanding prerequisites for my tea first thing in the morning.
I did manage to put the right amount of leaf in (though it was a close thing – forgot I had to measure and just started spooning leaves into the pot – it took a bit for my brain to kick in this morning) and remembering that this tea tastes lighter than the dry leaves smell like it should, I added just a tiny bit of sugar and milk (though the thought process of ‘lighter = more or less milk?’ took quite a while).
So even though I was still asleep, I did manage to brew this tea without any big screw ups. Yet this tea is still very light. Or rather, the lemon flavor of it is. There’s a lemon scent to it (thankfully not like a cleaning product lemon but a lemonade lemon) but just a hint of the flavor, mostly at the tail. It’s a soft tea, not very bold. Sort of plain if not for the light lemon flavor which, since it is so light, really just adds a bit of a fresh taste to the tea. Not a lot of depth of flavor (though more dimension than some flavored teas – Adagio’s Blackberry, I’m looking at you).
I’m not in love with this tea but I do enjoy it. I think I would enjoy it more if the dry leaves smelled differently – it’s SO strong! The superlemon scent hits me as soon as I open the tin so I end up anticipating that scent to translate to flavor in the liquor. But it doesn’t. Which is probably a good thing but then the light flavor become almost confusing. Nice. But confusing.
