My tea from greenteafairy arrived! Woohooo! Apparently when your parents ask you who the mail’s from and you answer ‘green tea fairy’ you get some pretty strange looks.
I was going to leave this a day or so to settle but the scent through the packaging was just so heavenly I had to make a cup almost immediately (almost because I was still drinking my previous cup). Now I did ask for a sample of this because I’m trying to find a replacement (or as near to one as I can get) for my beloved Maple Pecan Oolong, and greenteafairy did warn me I’d be disappointed because she’s on the same mission, so I was a bit wary. She was right about me being disappointed as a replacement for Maple Pecan Oolong, but since I pretty much expected that already I wasn’t too disappointed with the tea overall. It’s pretty tasty! I’m a huge fan of nutty teas in general, and this is about as nutty as it gets. My issue lies with the name, and I have the same problem a lot of others seem to in that out of all the nuts in the tea, pecan is probably the least prominent and yet it’s the one they chose to name it after. If this was called ‘nut pie’ I have a feeling it would have a lot fewer disappointed customers. Aside from that it really is a very nice tea! The flavour is a little strong and perhaps slightly on the chemically-tasting side, but it’s not much and I can live with it. I brewed this at boiling, and was worried about astringency because the recommended temperature is 195, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that it has no astringency whatsoever! I could happily drink this plain. I didn’t, though, because I wanted to try it with additives as I usually do the first time I drink a new tea before settling on how I like it best. With or without sugar, the almond flavour is most prominent, followed by the pistachio. I expected this from the scent, which was strongly marzipan-like. I added a splash of milk and the two flavours almost reversed, with the pistachio in the front of the sip and almond at the end. This became more pronounced as the tea cooled, too, and I’m thinking it might be to do with pistachio being a creamier flavour than almond. The pecan, which was nowhere to be found when I was drinking it black, peeks out a little at the very end of the sip with a pie crust sort of flavour that wasn’t there before either. It’s a really lovely, relaxing dessert tea, especially for a nut-lover, but it’s just not pecan pie. Thanks for the sample, greenteafairy!
Oh, good tip about adding milk! I’ll have to try it that way.
It still doesn’t taste like Pecan Pie haha.