Another one of those “hey! I bought this tea 5 years ago and forgot it in my cupboard!” teas. I think I might have paid $2 for this box of 100 tea bags. I didn’t have high expectations (and, other than the outer wrapping being open, I’d be surprised if I had even had one of these tea bags…but I guess I must have sometime). Good tea for $0.02 a cup? Give me a break.
I opened the box, and each set of 25 tea bags is wrapped in its own little baggie, but the tea bags are loose inside those baggies. A let-down…now not only do I have to prepare myself for terrible $2 tea, I have to prepare myself for terrible, $2 STALE tea. Lovely.
Opened the baggie. KAPOW. Jasmine. This is jasmine GREEN TEA? For real? Smells like flowers. Like if I was going to sprinkle lavender in hot water, add a single leaf of green tea, and then call that “Lavender Green Tea”. AND I DON’T LIKE OVERLY FLOWERY TEAS. This cup just can’t get better. It has officially lost all of its redeeming qualities. Expectations: rock bottom.
Only steeped for about 3 minutes, because watery jasmine tea would be better than full-strength jasmine tea. Error in assumption: this tea only has full-flavour or “water has not hit the tea bag yet”. Now I have to drink an overly flowery “green tea” that is probably shitty quality AND is stale. Siiiiiiiigh.
First sip: OHMYGODTHISISHOT. (note to self: let tea cool)
Second sip: OHMYGODTHISISGOOD. That’s right. I said it. It was good. Very, very good. Didn’t taste stale at all, didn’t taste overly flowery (despite smelling like a garden of jasmine flowers in liquid form), the tea base (it’s in the list of ingredients so it must be there) didn’t get bitter at all…I’m officially floored. I don’t think a tea has actually floored me before. But I guess there’s a first for everything.
Made myself a second cup thinking the first was just some kind of crazy mistake, forgot about it in the cup so I probably steeped it about 5 minutes the second time. Yes, a change in flavour. But not an unpleasant change in flavour. I think I’ll try (keyword: try) to stick to a 3-minute steep because I like that better.
I’m not going to say this is THE BEST jasmine green tea I’ve ever had, because I bought a ridiculously expensive jasmine green tea when I was in Japan and it tasted like unicorns and rainbows, but this comes really, really close.
Verdict: BUY ALL THE BOXES!
