Tea Total

A couple of Christmases ago now I got a ton of this from my mum, with a cute keep calm sticker on the front that said KEEP CALM MEM AND DRINK TEA. Nice. A month after that I got a dream job that flipped my life upside down and I no longer had to breathe deeply and drink tea to keep calm, so this mostly got reserved for guests. I just discovered this evening they’ve drunk it all. Thanks guests. Nice brew!

Divine! I knew I wanted this as soon as I came across it in a little tea shop I have started visiting every Sunday morning. The scent is heavenly, and the taste did not disappoint either. Real cherry pieces are visible in the tea leaves once it’s steeping, making me think this is a good quality tea (and not just artificially flavoured). Glad I bought this and highly recommend it to flavoured black tea lovers, especially if you like cherries.

Dry it has nice size dark twists that smell a little sweet almost like raisins and a little like a warm tobacco field. The wet leaves smell a little fruity, too. The cup brews a dark orange/brown and smells malty. The taste is mostly malty assam with a slight astrigency especially as the tea cools, but there is an underpinning of ceylon. The second cup I added a little sugar which I think brought out more of the ceylon flavor without losing too much of the malt. I tried a little milk after that and it became more malty again but lost it’s astrignecy. Overall a good breakfast tea, a nice break from the more ceylon based breakfast teas I usually drink.

I’ve tried about 7 teas from this brand and every single one has been disappointingly lacking. The kind of tea where if you drank it, you couldn’t place the flavour until someone told you what it was, then you spend the rest of the cup convincing yourself you’re drinking said flavour.
So I usually steer well clear, but I was lured into buying a packet from the smell of the leaves! The smell is heavenly and incredibly almondy, which instantly made it a contender to replace The Best Marzipan Tea In The World from The T Shop (which I believe has been discontinued). I couldn’t have been more wrong! The tea base seems to be a typical for Tea Total, meaning it tastes like nothing. You can get away with a crappy tea base on occasion if you have some kick-ass flavourings, but surprise – it barely tastes like anything. I can pick up a very faint hint of weird vanilla, with perhaps a ghost of an almond. Or maybe I’m imagining the almond simply because its in the tea name and I want to believe I can taste it…
Oh Tea Total. You are like the on-again-off-again boyfriend I keep going back to even though you treat me like crap because I want to believe you can change! But after 8 tries, I think we are finally done. For good. I’m blocking you on all my social networking sites and will cease to answer your texts/calls/emails/weepy knocks on my door at 3am.