Woohoo! The traveling tea box arrived from Australia today! I am almost out of my Harney and Sons Vanilla Black so I gave this one a try as one of our tea time selections today.
The leaf particles are small, broken pieces, not large fairly whole leaves like H&S. The dry leaves smell great. According to the packaging, both the tea and the vanilla beans come from New Guinea. Cool!
Because the particles were small, I told my daughter to stick with a three minute steep lest it became bitter. It worked well, as there was no bitterness but plenty of vanilla flavor. The black tea base was decent, I think almost but not quite as good as H&S. This has real vanilla beans ground up in the tea, and it certainly smells exactly like my kitchen smells when I make a batch of extract. Lovely!
What fun to try things I have never heard of, and would never see around here. Thank goodness we have the Internet now so we can order!
That tea box had a long journey!