The blend looks pleasant enough, with small strawberry pieces and chopped up leaves amongst it’s dark brown Ceylon (which has some sticks/twigs present). It has a dry strawberry scent, rather mild but also sweet and natural. Also getting wooden tones from the Ceylon.
My steeping parameters:
Leaf – 5g
Water Temperature – 100C
Vessel – personaliTEA teapot 600ml
1 Steeps – 3 minutes
Served with milk
Without milk the tea is mahogany in colour with a sweet but soft strawberry scent, more the fruit than the herb ie leaf. The picture shows one cup with milk and the other without.
The black tea base tastes thick with wood and malt notes and a hint of smoke. Behind that is a light sweetness from the strawberry which comes through in the after taste. The strawberry smelled natural but the flavour is mostly artificial, it’s a touch too sweet and is candy like. Similar to a strawberry gummy sweet. I can’t taste any cream or anything similar, the milk would have lightened some of the wood and malt tones from the Ceylon but even that hasn’t brought out the cream taste. My personal tip to add cream to this tea would be to use a little vanilla, if you have any vanilla sugar at home this tea would taste magical. Alas I have none so I will have to settle for plain strawberry.
Overall
Honestly it’s an average strawberry blend but it can be improved with the likes of sugar/sweetener, particularly vanilla sugar. The Ceylon base is too strong for the strawberry and it’s cream flavour was missing but despite all of that it still made a nice cup of tea. If I had more I would try adding sweetener and maybe a drop of vanilla extract.
For pictures and more information please view my blog –
http://www.kittylovestea.co.uk/2014/05/14/review-three-teas-from-zen-tea/
Flavors: Berries, Malt, Wood
Sadly, this one does age quickly. Fresh, it is awesome.