My Favourite Tea

I wanted a rich, black tea this morning and found myself reaching for this blend. To be honest, it’s one of the richest teas that I’ve come across, so certainly it didn’t disappoint.

I never noticed how short a steep is recommended before, but it doesn’t surprise me. This tea, despite having only three ingredients, gets saturated very fast, and certainly it’s teetered on being too bold for me before, with longer steeps.

As it is, the tea is musky, the chocolate and caramel creating a dark but sweet flavour profile alongside the tea itself. At two and a half minutes, it’s a lot milder than it could be, but it’s just about as strong as it needs to be to get the message across deliciously.

The perfect choice for this morning indeed. Yum.

Let’s not kid ourselves. Christmas is very much a time of teas with orange and spices. I think I have at least two or three teas that claim to be Christmas and include this particular blend, and this is one of them. In fact, I can think of only two teas in my collection have some variation on this popular combination of flavours that is not a Christmas tea, and one of them is Constant Comment.

Having said all that (and I’ll be the first to admit that it’s a bit of a mouthful), this tea is quite a good combination of the above. It’s rather musky without being too strong — even rather oversteeped as my second cup happens to be, it’s more musky than bitter, and not at all unpleasently such. Instead, it’s rather rich and spiced, with just a hint of bitterness, which actually blends well with the citrus. I chose not to sweeten it, but I do think it might go well with some sugar or honey as well — I might experiment with this another time.

All in all, a good take on a holiday classic.