Angrboda Send Message

Queued post, written May 2nd 2014

I’ve been wanting to try this for quite some time, partly because it’s vanilla but mostly because when I first noticed it on Steepster, the reviews of it were so mixed and most of them seemed to fall in the range of ‘mediocre’. I did not understand how this could possibly be. It’s vanilla for crying out loud! (Seems like Steepsterite-feelings about it are generally more positive now when I go back and look)

Luckily, Anna came to my aid and shared some with me.

NOW I understand how a vanilla flavoured tea can be mediocre. This tea is so strange! It’s an oolong base, and it’s a fairly flowery one at that. I know that vanilla comes from an orchid and all that, but that doesn’t mean that it automatically pairs well with a floral flavour. I can’t help but wonder if this base was picked specifically to underline the ‘orchid’ bit of the name.

Doesn’t really matter if it was though. What matters is the result is not very succesful. The flavouring just doesn’t suit the base at all. Or the base doesn’t suit the flavouring, whichever way around you wish to think of it.

There’s an awful lot of floral oolongness here, and it’s a greenish type oolong of the sort that I’m not very fond of to boot. And then a smidge of background vanilla here and there.

I can find so little actual vanilla in this that I hesitate to call it a vanilla tea.

And I like a fairly subtle flavouring! I’m always going on about how I want a flavoured tea to still feel like I’m drinking tea, but this is just… It’s not subtle, it’s downright obscure.

I think this oolong here is my least ever favourite base for vanilla. It would probably be quite nice by itself, or maybe with a teensy bit of citrus-y freshness. But it does not work with vanilla.