Peaches and Cream Tea

I got this sample from Cait along with the roasted Ti Guan Yin a while back. She included it at as surprise sample, but it’s a bit sad because I don’t really have the best history with peach in tea, but she didn’t know that.

So it’s been lying around for a while until today when i took it out of the sample basket all randomly (I moved all my sample to a big basket that I have recently. Lexitus think it makes it look like there are more than there really is.) and I didn’t have anything else that I’d rather have so okay.

It’s definitely peach and it’s definitely cream. It comes as a sort of delayed reaction when I take a sip, the first flavour present being a good honest Ceylon. It’s very round and very smooth in flavour.

If I had a tendency to like peach in tea I would most likely absolutely adore this one. But I don’t really, so I’m leaning towards a somewhat below average rating. Which also feels somewhat unfair, because I can recognise that I would have loved it if I had been a fan of peach tea, so that should give it some points too right. This is turning into some very complicated maths! I’ll just give it a clean fifty and be done with it.

Given that my city just got two feet of snow dumped on it this weekend and another foot is expected tonight, I had resigned myself to my Tea Table subscription not getting here for another week at least. However, I give respect to the US Postal Service after all, because there it was this morning!

This one sounded delicious and smelled very peaches-and-cream-y, both in the leaves and while steeping. And there is an absolutely lovely peaches and cream taste to it, but there’s also an immense bitterness as a taste and as an aftertaste. I dropped two lumps of sugar in, and it’s drinkable. I think perhaps if I were having this with dessert I would enjoy this level of bitterness for the flavor, but if this is a typical steep then it’s definitely not a morning tea —

— Wait, hang on a sec. I just had a brilliant idea: milk.

— Oh yes, that does it! A tiny splash of milk cut right through the bitterness. It really brings out the flavor, too. Oh, this is good! Definitely heavy on the cream with a hint of fruit; I wouldn’t necessarily pin “peaches” on it if I didn’t already know, but it’s not not peaches. I think I need to make myself another cup of this and add milk right away this time.