Strawberry Zabaglione

I’ve had my eye on this one for awhile. With each 52teas order (and there have been many already!), this one never made it to the final purchase round. It’s jumped in my cart a couple times, but each time I end up taking it out in favor of a more unique/limited creation. So thank you to Awkward Soul for sharing a couple cups worth and satisfying my curiosity about this one.

This smells delicious before taking a 3-minute hot bath. After infusion, the tea liquor smells creamy and strawberryish, but less so than the dry leaf did. First few sips leave me a little underwhelmed… Added more rock sugar than I care to admit and it started to be a little tastier.

I do have the leaves resteeping in the fridge, so we’ll see if that turns out to be any different.

This isn’t something I’d purchase, but am glad to cross off another tea from my shopping list.

Sipdown!

This is from a swap with Jackie T. I thought I had used it all, but there was enough left for a small cup. Yay!

This is one of my favorite fruit teas. Love the sweet strawberry and the creamy, custard-y flavors together. I think this tea was my introduction to 52 Teas. I must say, it left quite an impression!

(unabashed gushing here :)):

This is the most perfect strawberry-flavored tea! I taste creamy custard, vanilla and strawberries (glorious strawberries!) all floating atop a delicious black tea base. The aroma is heaven in a cup!

I love it!

Can’t wait to see what you guys think of this one. It has been a HUGE hit here at the shop. Only five left!

I finished this tea up. This is definitely a good tasting tea, and I might consider buying this in the future. However, I have a lot of tea to go through still. The strawberry is perfect in this black tea. Great blend, and it is very good with milk and sugar.

After getting the steep time right I truly enjoyed drinking this tea. The strawberry was actually juicy. I think I may try to make this either traditional iced tea or cold brew, not sure yet. It was slighty sweet and I would have liked it to be more. There was a definate creaminess to it. The best way to describe it this… It is like a high class strawberries and cream dessert you may find a four star hotel made with the freshest berries and homemade cream.

this really has been a very odd tea weekend… i’ve suspended numerical pronouncements more times this weekend than i ever have in my entire loose leaf drinking history! that’s not what i’ll be doing with this one… but it will be in the ball park.

like frank, 52teas alchemist/magician/cookerer i did not know what zabaglione was. i thought i did, but i was wrong. in my head it was a tart with strawberries and mascarpone cheese. thus when i tasted it i had a moment of pause…

i have no idea what kind of a real world dessert/bacon/jello baker frank is, but in terms of tea he is pretty skookum! this is a man that i would be happy cooking a pancake and bacon breakfast for me! im sure he’d pile on the butter and syrup, although we might have a brief heated discussion to the effect of ‘no, i do not want the bacon IN the pancakes’, but seeing as we haven’t met i could be way off in that statement. (something about their website strikes me that frank may have a small obsession with the bacon food group is all, lol). ANYWAY, i was surprised when i didn’t taste pastry.

… … … i was chagrined. frank makes awesome tea pastry! and pancakes, and french toast, and danii (the plural of danish… yes, my invention). where was my pastry? my buttery, flaky, liquid version of a crispy pastry to go with my strawberries and mascarpone? and speaking of which, where was my mascarpone??? i wished briefly i were in a restaurant so i could have an aside with chef frank!

and then i looked a bit more closely at the picture on the label… it didn’t have mascarpone or pastry. i was beginning to feel an overdeveloped sense of responsibility (the word guilt is so overdone).

following frank’s example i posed the question to the all knowing dr. google: ‘what is strawberry zabaglione?’ here is the short version of the answer: http://www.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/sites/bbcgoodfood.com/files/recipe_images/recipe-image-legacy-id—9921_11.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/6319/strawberry-zabaglione&h=400&w=440&sz=20&tbnid=qtarfLGZBW-0XM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=99&zoom=1&usg=__6jg8fMJBZcG7a53d4ZBzn6JZ9zA=&docid=X7wR9peJ8PooOM&sa=X&ei=YRvjUe7tDIiviQLgyIHgCg&ved=0CE4Q9QEwAw&dur=3799

the less codified answer is ‘strawberries and whipped cream. aw… i’m sorry frank! here i thought you had dropped the tea ball, and you didn’t.

this tea is absolutely strawberries and whipped cream. i think maybe frank could have swirled the whipped cream up into a fancier shape… like a swan or a 52, but i get that he might have been busy. the black tea background is there and nicely blended with the rest of the blend. there is nothing overpowering or any flavours that should be there that are not.

pedal to the medal: okay frank, the number you see is for your accomplishment, this tea is totally fancy strawberries and whipped cream… i don’t taste the little glass dish and silver spoon, but hey— i’m not sad about that.

HOWEVER if i were given the chance to buy the tea (yes i know it’s archived) i wouldn’t… simply because i also wouldn’t buy the dessert. i’m a pastry guy, lol.

I struggled with this one because of its name !
Zabaglione …typically italian…what’s zabaglione ?…hehe it seems to be what we call in French a Sabayon…Ok I know now what I’am going to drink ! yeah seems exiting now!
The dry leaf scent is absolutely wild strawberries to me. After steeping, this is a pleasant black tea base (not bitter) with creamy strawberries.

It’s a yummy dessert tea but it’s not a sabayon/zabaglione to me – I don’t get the typical sugared alcohol taste we get in a zabaglione, it’s quite different but good !

Not something I would stock but nice, thank you Azzrian for sharing :)

This was from the Zoomdweebies bestsellers sampler.

I am finally done the sampler. I am glad to have purchased it, being part of a kickstarter campaign and all, and also to have been able to try a bunch of new teas. But they are not teas I would have normally ordered, because I probably would not have liked them a whole lot anyway. So Hooray from trying them, and for also being done with them :)

I could have sworn that I have tried this one before from a swap, but I couldn’t quite remember if it was this exact one or not, and I couldn’t find a review from me hiding in all the other reviews.

This one is very similar to the blueberry zabaglione, except with strawberry. The strawberry is artificial tasting to me, but not in a bad way. Kind of like strawberry flavoured gum. I am finding the black base to be a bit bolder, slightly astringent. There is a strawberry taste, it is creamy. I am getting a slight bit of pastry taste.

I am wondering if I steeped this one too long as I am finding it quite a bit astringent which I don’t usually get with other 52 teas blends, but I steeped for the usual amount of time. Hmmm, who knows…

I’ve prepared a couple of pots of this, and have held off writing a tasting note, since I wasn’t getting what I thought I should be getting. The dry tea smell is heavenly. Cream, strawberries, tea, it is all there and it smells like it should taste wonderful. But my first couple of preparations didn’t. I didn’t really get any of the flavor notes, I’d get vague whiffs of strawberry and cream, but nothing like what the dry mix promised. And bitter. Clearly, my standard black tea preparation of boiling and a four minute steep wasn’t cutting it.

So this morning I set out, Brita pitcher in hand (okay, fridge), and looked over what Steepsteristas had to say about their preparation. According to most tasting notes, I was oversteeping. So step one was to cut the steep time to a mere 2.5 minutes. I admit, I was nervous. It seemed so little. Then I came across AmazonV’s tasting note. That recommended a scant 190-200 for temperature. At this point, I was game for anything. So I set up my Breville, filled my pitcher with filtered water (a first for my tea—normally it gets straight tap), and let the Breville do its thing.

This pot definitely has a much stronger scent than previous pots did. It is also significantly less bitter. It still isn’t there however. On the sip I get….tea. Yes, tea. Good tea, but tea. No fruit, no creaminess, just tea.

Is my palate broken? Is this thing on? This is not funny. Maybe I’m just not cut out for fancy flavored teas. This is very demoralizing. Maybe I should stock up on cheap bagged tea so that I’m not spending money on tea that I don’t really “get”.

Okay, hissy fit over. Onward and upward, right?