China Rose Tea OP

5/5 ESP Emporium Teas

I’m finally reviewing the last tea from my recent ESP Emporium purchase. And I’m finally feeling a little better after a horrendous two days of P90X. Yesterday was Yoga, and even though I can’t do half the moves and generally harbor a strong dislike of yoga, it really made me feel better. It stretched out all my sore muscles so that I am actually capable of walking today! Hooray!

On to the tea, this smells luxurious! The dry leaf aroma is pure roses. It’s like I stuck my nose in a giant bouquet and took a deep breath. It’s also slightly perfumey, but mostly it’s a natural rose scent. Mmm, the aroma translates well into the taste. This is definitely genuine rose!

The black tea base is pretty subtle and nondescript. It definitely doesn’t taste like the Orange Pekoe I know. It adds a slightly metallic zing to the taste. I added a tiny splash of milk, but the zing was still there. Then I added an even tinier bit of sweetener. Not enough to make the tea taste sugary, just enough to make it lean towards sweet and distract from that weird metallic zing. Of course, I could also be imagining the zing. I did just eat egg whites with cheese, so maybe my taste buds are compromised.

With sweetener added, it reminds me of a lychee tea. It tastes a lot like honey! But I can tell it’s still rose and that’s just my imagination wandering in search of ways to describe the taste without saying “rose” a hundred times. Oh well, it is a rose tea after all. So, I suppose it’s fine to be a little lacking in the adjective department this morning. Rose rose rose! :P

It’s a little strange to be drinking liquid roses, but I’m really enjoying this! The floral aftertaste is quite lovely, with roses softly lingering on my tongue long after the sip. I feel like I’m sitting in a rose garden in the midst of summer with a light breeze ruffling the rose bushes and birds chirping from branches overhead. Maybe it’s a secret rose garden hidden behind high ivy-covered walls with nothing to give it away save for the lovely scent of roses on the air. Mmm, this is a lovely tea. And now I really want to go watch The Secret Garden. :)

EDIT: I think I probably was imagining that metallic zing. I no longer get that sensation from this tea.

Before my package from JacquelineM, this was the only rose black tea I had. Since I haven’t had a cup in quite a while, another was in order so that I could compare it to the other rose blacks I’ve had recently. Previously I steeped this for 4 minutes, but I dropped it to 3 minutes this time to match up with the others.

This one definitely has the sweet-rose aroma, but it seems tempered by the black tea. A taste confirms that it seems to fall between Harney’s Rose Scented and Upton’s Rose Congou in that the rose flavor is sweet and floral like the Rose Scented (not herby rose like Rose Congou), but it features equally with the black tea base like Rose Congou (not overwhelming it like Rose Scented). This black tea base is malty, and almost bready, which plays well with the warmth of the rose florals. I think a four minute steep is probably better for this one since it seems a touch weak, but it’s still tasty.

All in all, this tea holds up well to both Harney’s and Upton’s, actually, and it seems like it might be what Harney’s would be like if the rose wasn’t so all-consuming. ’

Side note: I really wish all tea companies would list the origin of their black tea bases. All black teas are not created equally! I always assumed this black tea base was Chinese given the name, but it’s possible it’s only referring to the Chinese process of scenting the tea, not the origin of the tea itself, and honestly it tastes more like a Ceylon than the various Chinese teas I’ve had. Not that I can be totally sure because most of the time I’m not sure exactly what kind of black tea I’m drinking! I guess I really am going to have to break down and go through samples of varieties of plain black teas so that I can start identifying them better myself.