Madison Bartholemew Send Message

This tea feels so complex… let’s start at the beginning.
The leaves smell odd. It kinda reminds me of the mintiness of tooth paste and pinesol. Or a minty Christmas tree… But luckily the brew smells lighter and sweeter than that. Cause that wasn’t the most pleasant thing I’ve ever stuck my nose into.
The brew is a nice light amber. If you can’t tell I’m nervous about this one mostly cause I don’t like spearmint.
And taste… This is where they pull the rug out from under you. There is some kind of crazy undertone of vanilla or cream or something. I believe this is due to the champagne portion of the flavoring and champagne is an amorphous enough of a flavor that it has to be blamed for the creaminess and some kind of sparkly tingle flavor. Weird/NEAT!
On top of that is a light amount of lime. The lime seems like the binding flavor as it is there but everything else radiates around it. Really it’s like a lime cream soda. Delicious.
And somewhere sitting in its own little dark corner (yea! it’s not prominent!) is the spearmint. The rest of the flavors are very bright so I agree that a darker flavor in the blend is good and necessary to provide the bottom of the blend and let the other flavors spring board off of it. It’s not over powering but as my tea is cooling off it is masking the other flavors a little more. This is where the crazy interplay of flavors come in… mint and champagne must equal “sparkly”! I don’t know how they thought that up but it works with the spearmint flavor coming out so late in the game that you really register sparkles before mint.
After almost finishing my 2 oz. I feel that the interesting points in the blend are a little too much. Cup one is all about discovering and as you can see there is a lot to discover and experience… and then cup after cup you kinda get used to it and the excitement goes away and you’re left with a very complicated tea that you’ve picked a prodded at so it has lost its shine. I really wish each cup brought about the same excitement but… I guess it doesn’t have any staying power for me.
I think 2 oz. for a party where many people will get to experience something new in exciting is a great idea for this tea… but for personal everyday drinking it’s not staying wonderful.