The Naughty Vicar

Wow I can’t believe I have no tasting note on this one!
I had to go back to my roots of loose leaf today.
This is one of the fist loose leaf teas I ever had in my stash before I had a stash even!
I got this while in St. Louis for my daughter’s neuro surgery appt. (one of many) – we were lucky enough to be able to go to The London Tea Room! We all loved every moment of our time there – wonderful place!
This tea reminds me of the struggles we all went though and the good times as well.
We love St. Louis so many positive changes happened there for my Emma and our family!
Happy dance.
This tea is smokey and fruity.
It has a little bit of a Lapsang Souchong flavor to it but only slightly and please don’t be discouraged if you don’t like LS – London Tea Room does not even mention if the black base is an LS but I just sort of get that smokey thing from it – but only a touch. It is more sweet and vanilla.
Great berry flavor.
I do have to say I have never tasted anything else like it!
If you want something new and different in a black tea this is the one to order!

I’ll confess: Since I can’t really taste much, and I’m going to need some serious caffeine to get through this wedding today, I’m aiming at either drinking black teas that don’t really float my boat, or that I’m almost out of. This one qualifies in the 2nd category. I had enough for one potent cup, which I’m drinking now. I’ve discovered that I CAN taste ‘sweet’, so I added a little stevia, & that helped me to taste a hint of the vanilla & black current that makes this tea so special.

I am so painfully behind on logging my teas. I’ve been drinking a lot, but for some reason I am lacking the motivation to log them all. Well, I must push through and try to catch up! Starting with this, which I got in the book club swap with Terri HarpLady and am sipping right now!

I was planning on a gongfu session with one of the new(ish) Verdant oolongs, but I’ve been eating painfully healthy recently so screw it, I’m making a latte! Not that lattes are particularly bad for you, I’ve been using less and less sugar in mine recently. 1 cup milk, 1 cup water, a tiny squeeze of honey, and my sample of this lovely blend which reminds me wonderfully of my beloved Paris.

This is creamy with a delicious berry note, so smooth and tasty! As a latte it’s just to die for, like a fancy dressed up london fog. And perfect for the book we are reading, An American Heiress. Blackcurrant always reads as a very European taste to me (probably because of those hard candies that come in the fancy gold tins), so I can close my eyes and imagine myself in a British castle, hanging out in front of a roaring fire instead of a boring old tv!

To celebrate having gone to bed at a decent hour AND having woken up on time (in spite of the fact that I’ve done nothing productive since then), I decided to have a nice cup of black tea! And what better to have than a surprise sample given to me by Azzrian: the Naughty Vicar!

The dry tea smells a bit fruity and rich. Mmmm.

Steeped, it smells exactly like some sort of familiar candy! Perhaps sour berry gummy candies? The $0.05 ones? I can’t quite place it, but it is SO familiar. And yay, it tastes true to the aroma! Not sweet, but it tastes like those candies, backed by a light black base (it might have been stronger had I steeped it longer than 3 minutes, but I’m SO wary of oversteeping right now).

This is pretty good! Not a tea I’d rush to go out and buy myself, but I doubt I’ll have any difficulty finishing it. Thanks Azzrian!

This smells nice. Sweet and warm and cuddly. A bit like cinnamon toast without the cinnamon. So basically buttered, sugared bread. Mmm. I actually think the vanilla is corresponding to the butter and sugar thing. There’s another, almost blackberry preserves note in there. Very faint. I’m guessing it is the currant? I have no idea what a currant really is or tastes like (other than it is a fruit) so I’m not sure if that is how currant is supposed to smell, but that’s what I’m going with.

Taste-wise, it’s not as sweet as the smell. I’m picking up more of the blackberry-which-is-probably-actually-currant taste, especially at the end – it is the main aftertaste, very fruity – and not so much on the vanilla. It’s nice and I think a pretty easy to like tea, but I want something more dessert like. So for the remaining 8-ish ounces, I’m putting in a teaspoon of sugar and a splash of milk.

Hello berries! It’s very fruity now. Almost a mix of grape and blackberry jelly – not preserves but the sweeter jelly (might want to back off on the sugar next time just a bit). The front taste is very grape jelly and then a more blackberry taste comes in on the end. Yep, this would qualify as a dessert tea now.

Okay, this is not a complex cup. Sure, there is tea in there but it’s a backdrop for the fruity taste, especially once doctored. Straight it is darker, richer… more of an average-ish morning feeling blend with a fruity addition. It seems like a better quality tea base than a lot of flavored blends (I’m thinking Adagio here, which I don’t really enjoy their flavored stuff without milk and sugar) and very sippable with no additions, but it’s nothing more than on the good side of standard. The milk and sugar makes it very dessert-y though. The tea moves fully to the background and dark berries just do a little chorus line dance in the front of it, sequins flashing. Yeah, not a fancy or nuanced cup. But nice flavors and so I’m liking it.

thank you terriharplady I think i prefer this black currant version to the Harney’s version that i’ve had. This one has a little stronger flavour, the addition of a bit of vanilla and it smells wonderful! the black base doesn’t overwhelm the black currant flavour and there’s no astringency here to ruin anything. I have a bit left so i might try cold brewing this to see what that does to this one :)

Thank you Terri harplady for this wonderful brew:)
This is soooo tasty, I have added it to my shopping list. This is smooth, fragrant and essentially delicious.

My big sis called and asked me what was up. As always, she’d been harping, I’d been writing and we both were drinking tea. Actually, I was poking through my cupboard deciding what to have next. She asked if I’d tried the samples she’d sent and recommended The Naughty Vicar. “You’ll like it,” she assured me.

Boy, does she know me. The minute the water hit this tea, I knew she was right. That fruity,
vanilla-y scent was just the thing after my morning of Chi obsession. I’d been sampling all sorts of chais with coconut milk and sweetener and this was just what I needed to cleanse my palate.

The Naughty Vicar reminded me a bit of Paris Morning (insert love sonnets here) but with a different sort of fruity twist. It was a little astringent but not excessively so, a touch tart but still quite good. Since I was feeling naughty, I added coconut milk and a bit of sweetening, which brought out the fruitiness a bit more. I like my fruit flavors a little more assertive, but over all it was a delightful change of pace. It was good, very good, and the name conjured up all manner of amusing ideas.

Thank you Harplady for this wonderful sample. I’m looking forward to indulging in more naughtiness soon.

It smelled really good. The flavour was a nice vanilla mixed with berry. This makes a good brunch tea.

I got this as a lovely surprise from Azzrian – thanks so much! It even gave the package it came in a lovely, fruity aroma.

I brewed this for 3 mins on the nose as I have a tendency to over-steep black teas. This is highly fragrant when brewed and yields light, juicy blackberry notes. I can sit by this and enjoy the aroma drifting over from the cup.

With the first sips, the taste is more floral and less juicy than other flavoured teas I’ve tried, and the black tea seems smoother and (as another reviewer pointed out below), tastes of good quality. I think this would be something I’d have as a breakfast blend on days as a change from Cream of Earl Grey. As I get further down the cup, it’s growing on me more and more. The slight sweetness reminds me of chewy sweets I used to have in the UK as a kid (in a good way).

It reminds me of the sweet smell of pipe tobacco.