As with Happy Trails, I read the ingredients for this when Stacy first posted them a while ago, but have since forgotten and haven’t looked since.
This is a very interesting tea. The dry leaf smells mostly of maple (which I got excited about), which is followed by strawberry, which is followed by orange, in descending order of strength. I had high hopes, because I love maple flavoured teas, especially Butiki’s, but this isn’t really what I expected. The liquor while brewing smells very tangerine-y, and the other notes are mostly swallowed up. The flavour is the same. Strong tangerine note in the initial sip, which develops into a more orange note in the aftertaste (could Stacy have used both flavourings? It is a very strong orange citrus note). There is a syrupy sweet maple note if I block out all of the orangeness, and I think I can taste some vague strawberry in there somewhere, though I don’t think I would have picked up on it if I hadn’t smelled it fairly clearly in the dry leaf. There’s a chance it could be some other berry note, maybe raspberry, but strawberry seems the most likely to me. I’m picking up on cinnamon-like notes which I don’t think are coming from the flavourings, but pretty much confirm my suspicions that the oolong base is the Fu Shou Shan, which I am very fond of and always translates to me as having natural apple and cinnamon notes. Right at the very back end of the sip I taste something sweet, light and pillowy which is making me think this might have some marshmallow flavouring added to it, though if it does probably not much.
It’s fun to guess which ingredients are in these mystery teas, but honestly the citrus in this one is a little bit overwhelming for me and I would rather drink the Fu Shou Shan on its own. I preferred the other mystery tea.
ETA: As this is starting to cool, the maple flavour is becoming more pronounced at the beginning of the sip before the orange kicks in. I’m pretty well convinced it’s one of the flavours.
