Took with me to do errands post-V Day haze yesterday morning (we slept in—oh so glorious!—after Friday’s fun of drinking really good chai, napping, exchanging presents which excited me greatly ‘cause R gave me two UPress books on Buffy, one on gender natch and the other on the notion of chosen families, very thoughtful as a lot of my best undergrad work was on adoption theory, having a blast at the cat vid party laughing our tails off and making cat art including our own origami grumpy cats and business cat night lights and Warhol cat portraits, talking over figure skating footage and martini and manhattans, chowing down on nachos and watching silly TV, plus the usual makin’ out…woke up and cuddled, then spontaneously went to Elwood’s Shack for smoked slider and steelhead trout taco lunch before our usual running around, and the weather was the kindest it’s been in over a month, sunny with blue skies, in the 60s). Today we head to the Dali exhibit, find some hanging rods for all the tenugui art I want to hang in the living room tea nook, finish Elementary, and eat king cake. It’s been a great weekend, even if we did skip out of last night’s board game marathon at our friends’.
I am usually a bit skeptical of Lady Greys as I like the “masculine” type of bergamot, not the floral aspect but the soapy-clean one, and I often find Lady Greys too brightly fruity or floral in the ways I don’t care for. But this one intrigued me because I love lavender and hoped it’d lend a soapy cleanness like the bergamot I love. It surprised me. It is very “feminine”—R said it was nice and soft—and even looks the part, brewing up a pretty clear gold instead of brown—but it isn’t too brightly fruity sweet for my tastes. There’s a mysterious edge of creaminess, like a delicate Cream Earl Grey, and the lavender and bergamot is definitely present but never overpoweringly heady, instead light to fit the body and other aspects of the tea. It’s just right, very well balanced. I would drink it again! My favorite non-floral-heady-explosion blend so far. Would be excellent in the springtime.
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Awww, sounds like you had so much fun :-)
You are spot-on with the idea that this is our “Lady Grey” equivalent. I read somewhere that Lady Grey is actually one of the few tea names that is trademarked, so when we were asked by a high tea restaurant for something to fill that gap, we created this.
Glad you liked it. It is worth re-trying with a nice cake. That’s what it was made for!
We put lavender and oranges in it purely because we had both in our garden: In Australia you still get Lady Devotea made exclusively with our own oranges and lavender, although we now buy lavender for other blends because we can’t grow enough.
In order to get a full taste without just adding less bergamot and making that seem underwhelming, we blend a very light tea into our basic black tea and bergamot blend. It’s a balancing act made trickier by the fact that despite blending it, I have never tasted it: I am allergic to both oranges and bergamot, This one was created entirely by nose!
I did thanks, TheTeaFairy! Definitely one of the best VDays I’ve had in some time…I’m sure it helped it landed on a Friday this year, ha. We’re old. :b
Robert, I bet it’d be great with some cake. Can definitely see that. And color me very impressed you managed to blend it so artfully by scent alone. Wow! I have nothing but admiration for the skill involved in blending teas well, and I must say everything in the sampler pack I’ve tried so far has been very impressive in terms of balance. I usually don’t care much for Lady Grey style tea, but this one was especially nice.
Awww, sounds like you had so much fun :-)
You are spot-on with the idea that this is our “Lady Grey” equivalent. I read somewhere that Lady Grey is actually one of the few tea names that is trademarked, so when we were asked by a high tea restaurant for something to fill that gap, we created this.
Glad you liked it. It is worth re-trying with a nice cake. That’s what it was made for!
We put lavender and oranges in it purely because we had both in our garden: In Australia you still get Lady Devotea made exclusively with our own oranges and lavender, although we now buy lavender for other blends because we can’t grow enough.
In order to get a full taste without just adding less bergamot and making that seem underwhelming, we blend a very light tea into our basic black tea and bergamot blend. It’s a balancing act made trickier by the fact that despite blending it, I have never tasted it: I am allergic to both oranges and bergamot, This one was created entirely by nose!
I did thanks, TheTeaFairy! Definitely one of the best VDays I’ve had in some time…I’m sure it helped it landed on a Friday this year, ha. We’re old. :b
Robert, I bet it’d be great with some cake. Can definitely see that. And color me very impressed you managed to blend it so artfully by scent alone. Wow! I have nothing but admiration for the skill involved in blending teas well, and I must say everything in the sampler pack I’ve tried so far has been very impressive in terms of balance. I usually don’t care much for Lady Grey style tea, but this one was especially nice.