Alys Mackyntoich Send Message

Cherry Bomb is a green tea with cherry (duh) and rose petals. It’s a wonderfully indulgent cuppa. The scent of the blend is like dried cherries (no surprise, that’s a major ingredient) and, when brewed, the tea echoes that aroma. It’s cherry flavor without being sweet. It reminds me of the rick black cherries that I find in farm stands around here (NJ) in mid-June. Under the cherries is a nice quality green tea that doesn’t get too bitter, as some of the cheaper quality greens do.

Although there are rose petals in the tisane, I don’t get any rose or floral notes in the tea. If you’re someone who likes sweetener in your tea, I imagine this would handle sugar or honey nicely.

Coming off a couple of gray and rainy days here, this was a wonderful, summery treat.

TARDIS 10 is a blend of black tea flavored with coconut and banana. I was dubious about banana in tea, but you know what? It really really works. It shouldn’t work. But it does, it really does. I drank it iced because it’s dreadfully hot out in NJ right now, and I think it’s probably best iced instead of hot. The coconut is the strongest flavor element, followed by the tea flavors, with the banana lurking in the background waving insouciantly. It’s like a black tea daiquiri and I mean that in the best way possible.

I’d be careful with over-steeping this one. Two to 2.5 minutes was enough, even for icing. More than that and the tea notes are likely to get a little bitter.

I imagine this tea would work really well sweetened. I’m going to try it tomorrow with the amber sugar so that I get the brown sugar/molasses notes. I also imagine that this iced tea would work astoundingly well with rum, but someone else will have to try that experiment.

Addendum: Yep, amber sugar works amazingly well, and I don’t even like sweet tea most of the time. I imagine Sugar in the Raw would get the same flavor.

I approve of this tea, with just a few caveats.

First of all, believe the steeping time on this one. You want to steep it for 5 minutes to get the proper flavor. Otherwise the coconut and almond flavors don’t come out strongly enough to distinguish it from any other good quality black.

Second of all, if you’re going to use it for iced tea, either think again or double the amount of tea and triple the steep time. It doesn’t hold up to icing otherwise.

Honestly, I think this one is best used for hot tea anyway. Fortunately, the weather here turned gray and cool and rainy enough that hot tea seemed like a good idea today and I was finally able to get this tea at its best. The almond and coconut flavors aren’t strong. They build up and enhance the tones of the black tea. This quality comes out best when the tea is hot. (People who don’t like coconut still won’t like this tea, though).

This is a solid B+ tea, definitely will buy some when I finish working through the many generous tea samples people have sent me.