Well, my sleep schedule has gotten a bit confused. New meds and my monthly bout of weird sleep schedule flipping means that I was up til like 2pm this afternoon, and then slept til 8pm. It is very disorienting waking up at night, even me being nocturnal a lot, I prefer late afternoon wake ups. When I was a kid, my favorite thing was the time I didn’t go to work with my family, because it meant that I got to sleep til late in the afternoon, one of the reason I have worked a lot of night shift jobs in my past. I am a night owl…clearly that means I need an owl teapet!
Recently Teavivre introduced a line of herbal teas, this idea intrigued me because they seem to be mostly flower based, tea friends…I have a weakness for drinking flowery teas. When I was younger (wow, lots of younger days stories) I would gather up the edible flowers from my mom’s garden and make teas from them, they were usually loaded with sugar and more like flowery syrup, but I loved them. This love has not died, and is very fitting for Bucolic Jasmine Herbal Tea, a blend of Jasmine, Roses, Chrysanthemum, Osmanthus, and Stevia leaves. If you know from my history of tea rambling, jasmine, rose, and osmanthus are probably some of my favorite flowery notes, so this sounds fun. The aroma is a summer day in a garden, very heady and sweet, strong notes of roses and jasmine with a moderate sweet osmanthus note. The finish is a gentle sweet honey and that hay spiciness that is chrysanthemum.
Into my steeping vessel the tea goes, making me both happy and sad. Sad because the beautiful and vibrant flowers always look so sad when they are steeped, no color and floppy. Happy because it smells really good, like a room of blooming roses and jasmine, with a distant hint of osmanthus. I hope the osmanthus is not overshadowed because it is probably my favorite flower to have as a tea. The liquid is a bit more mellow, the three main flowers are balanced and the chrysanthemum adds a tiny hint at the end.
Ah stevia, you are such a fun thing. It is very sweet and distinct, having a natural sweetness similar to sugar but with more in common with licorice with its lingering sweetness, I like stevia leaves. That is the first thing I noticed, the stevia sweetness, then jasmine and rose, lots of jasmine and rose. Towards the middle and end there is osmanthus with a finish of gentle green and lingering sweetness. I did not really taste chrysanthemum, and other than smelling it a bit, I would not have known it was in there. I steeped it twice since the website recommends it and it was pretty bland, most the taste was in the first steep. I liked it, this is a tea that is unassuming enough I can sip it when I am feeling off and want something flowery without being overwhelmed.
For blog and photos: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2015/09/teavivre-bucolic-jasmine-herbal-tea-tea.html
Flavors: Jasmine, Osmanthus, Rose, Straw, Sweet
