How many citrus fruits can you name? This tea is flavored with damn near every one I can come up with. Which is both fascinating and somewhat intimidating. It seems like it could be really delicious or a total fail. I’m going into this not knowing what to expect.
Right off the bat it gets points for cornflowers, with their adorable blueness among the dark leaves. There is also some citrus peel visible. The fragrance is strongly citrus, pretty heavy on the grapefruit to my nose. Though I’m also getting some of the orangey, tangeriney aspect. There’s a bitterness to it, which I suppose is from the peel.
From the color of the liquor and the aroma, I’m guessing the base here is Ceylon. It has a pretty russet color, and a mild fragrance. There is some definite citrus in the aroma; again I’m getting mostly grapefruit and some orange input. I’m a little worried going into the tasting that the citrus is going to be bitter, as it has that same bitter twinge to it that the dry leaves have.
But fortunately, there’s no bitterness to the taste. It turns out that the citrus is much mellower in taste than in smell. It’s actually almost too mellow for my taste. It doesn’t really make its presence known much at all until the finish, where I get some lemon, and maybe a little of the grapefruit and orange. The rest of the citrus blends together into a sort of single citrusy mish-mash. It’s tasty though. I don’t get a lot of bergamot, so if you’re not a bergamot fan you don’t need to be scared by this one.
I like French teas in general quite a bit, and I haven’t had anything from The O Dor so far that was an outright failure. This one is pleasant, but it doesn’t make me talk to myself under my breath as I’m drinking it. I’m not saying “wow” or “that’s good,” or “mmmm” or such things. By that standard I think it’s something I’ll enjoy drinking but isn’t going to be high on my list to replace when it is gone.
