Monk's Blend (Mnichów)

Now here’s a tea company that probably won’t get any other ratings but mine; this is a tea house (or herbaciarni) in the New Town of Warsaw, and I’m pretty sure their tea blends are their own. I’ve been drinking almost nothing but Earl Grey lately, due mostly to lack of selection, but here I had some options! I chose this one based on the fact that it was supposed to be black tea flavored with vanilla, jasmine and lavender, some of my favorites.

I had a pot with about two cups in it and no way to stop the steeping, so I had two differently steeped cups, one at 5 minutes and one much longer. If I looked in the pot I could see jasmine flowers floating at the surface, and the aroma was that of lavender and some other general floral scents. The first cup was decidedly tasty, but hard to pick out the individual flavors; it was like they just completely melded together or something. If I looked I could maybe find hints of lavender and vanilla, but I wasn’t getting jasmine. I’m not sure what the base tea was, but it was imparting a lot of its own flavor, including a distinct spiciness, like cinnamon. The second cup was much stronger, and the spicy black tea base pretty much overwhelmed the other flavors. It was pretty tasty, but not what I was looking for. At this point I had about a half of a cup left and I got distracted eating, so when I came back to it, it was pretty much cold. Now here’s where it blew me away with awesome jasmine in the aroma and the taste. I wanted more! This would probably be great iced. Too bad I’ll never get to really find out! (it didn’t look like they were selling the tea)