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Hallieod drank Keemun Spruce by PureAromaTea

73 tasting notes

Oh, happy days – another new-to-me tea I really like! I’d never, to my knowledge, had a straight Keemun before the other day, so again had no idea what to expect. I ended up getting a sample of this and a small bag of the Keemun Orchid from Kent & Sussex Tea & Coffee Co. at around the same time. I tried the Kent & Sussex first (I’ll add that to Steepster eventually), expecting at least some of the promised “sweetish flavour”, the honey, plum and orchid. Getting instead the very mild smokiness I now know is characteristic of a Keemun, with a woody flavour and slight sharpness I didn’t find very pleasant, I decided to brew up a cup of the Pure Aroma Tea to compare. They say it’s delicate and “perfumed”, but given that the K&S was called orchid and the PAT was called spruce, I expected more sharp woodiness rather than less. Instead, I got a lovely cup of smoothness. The touch of smokiness plays nicely with the hint of woodiness, but here there’s no sharpness at all, rather a taste that balances beautifully this side of sweet. I wouldn’t describe it as perfumed, but that’s not a bad thing. I drank a bit without milk, as per the notes on the package, but then enjoyed the rest with a splash of milk. (I’m kind of funny about black teas, because of drinking so many strong Irish/English breakfast blend types daily over so many years. Sometimes a taste can be nice, but I get a bit agitated if I can’t find the right strength to drink it with milk, or perfect taste to drink it without. This was unusual in that it was easy to enjoy the same cup both ways.)

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Boiling 3 min, 0 sec

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I’ve been drinking tea pretty much all my life, allowing for the fact that there probably was no tea in my baby-bottles. I gave it up twice, once when a then-boyfriend sneered at me for being addicted (okay, I was, but I was also stubborn enough to bear a week of the blinding headaches and overwhelming exhaustion that followed cold-turkey withdrawal), and once on my first pregnancy. Neither experience gave me any reason to believe a life without tea is a good life.

Having spent most of my younger days in Ireland, where tea is everywhere, and mostly it’s decent, I whined my way across the States in the 80s and first half of the 90s. Now back in Dublin, and the tea situation is a bit mixed, but there’s the internet to provide what nearby shops don’t!

I started drinking green and white teas as well as my staple black a good few years ago now, but have recently decided I need to LEARN something more about tea than the little I know.

My likes:
- strong black tea blends; some flavoured blacks, such as Earl Grey and a small (but growing) number of other fruit and flower-flavoured ones; and chai. (For some daft reason, I feel like a tea fraud drinking sweet chai at home, though I’ll happily drink it out.)

- Chinese greens (may update this when I’ve learned enough to be more specific); some flavoured greens, especially if they’re made by the fabulous Yumchaa; Genmaicha; getting to like Sencha, as long as it’s not too bitter.

- White tea, pretty much as long as it’s good quality, I like it. Some flavoured ones are nice, though it’s easy to overpower the more delicate taste of white.

- Rooibos, which I know, I know, isn’t properly ‘tea’. (As above for Yumchaa flavoured rooibos – some of my favourites.)

Dislikes:
- Any black tea made by someone who doesn’t know you need BOILING WATER. (See above about the Whining Years.)

- Hibiscus in fruit-flavoured teas. Looks so pretty! Tastes so awful!

I’m working on trying to like Hojicha, which isn’t going too well yet. Jane Pettigrew describes it as “biscuity”, but unless she’s eaten a lot of cigarette-flavoured biscuits in her time, I don’t get it.

- Aniseed in spiced teas. (Just discovered this one for the dislike list today, in an otherwise-tasty chai. Don’t like the tongue-numbing effect.)

Indecisive, despite being opinionated – okay, very opinionated – so may just add notes rather than rating.