Nonsuch Estate Tea

So I brewed up a pot of Samurai Chai earlier but I had to toss it. I have a spider on a porch that likes to try to use my cup as base for her web. This time she got my cup pretty good as I was tooling around on amazon. I think this episode is the final installment. It sure looked like I had a little bug body in my cup when I tossed it out. So on to the tea I actually get to drink.

I call this one Nosuck tea and it lives up to it’s name! I find it very smooth and mellow. I see that the description uses coppery and bright. I agree with these two assessments. I find a sweet taste at the end reminiscent of honeysuckle. Not even a hint of astringency so far. I’m quite happy with this purchase.

I’m considering this to be the best tea I will never want to drink again.

Please, allow me to explain.

This tea is very good. It is a very light, mellow, golden black tea. It definitely falls in the more caramel-ly range of black teas, and is very pleasant on the tongue. It’s mellow, it’s smooth, and it’s slightly sweeter than what I normally get from a straight black tea.

But that’s it. The flavor is fleeting, it doesn’t linger, it doesn’t entice me with spicy secrets. It knocks on the door, asks you to vote, and moves on. Two weeks from now, I’m not going to remember it’s name. I’ll stop and go “You know what I want, a good straight black tea… that would taste great” and I’ll pick something that tastes like a black tea, not it’s mellow cousin. He’s a nice guy, but I just don’t think he can get the job done.

Unless you’ve decided you want to try your luck at hand-blending flavored black teas. And you have this flavor that you know would taste great, but you’re afraid it would get overpowered. So you call up black tea’s mellow cousin.

So yeah. It’s good. I just won’t ever find myself going “OH MY GOD I MUST HAVE NONSUCH!”. Except right there, but that doesn’t count.