Nautilus Tea Company

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.

This sounded good! And I wanted it to be good. But…. oh. Hm. Wow. It smells like a soapy off-brand $0.99 vanilla candle when it’s dry and foams when you add water. Not just some light bubbles from the water plunging below the surface of the stuff already in the cup, but it foams up like you forgot to wash all of the dish soap out of your mug. (And I had just drank the rest of the previous cup of Nepal Gold Meadow, so that couldn’t be the case.) Left a white bubbly film in the tea basket and everything.

The flavor quality is about what you would expect from a gas station pre-packaged vanilla sponge cake, if you were so desperate as to eat one of those. Not much depth, just an odd soapy artificial vanilla. Can’t say I expected much from a tea that’s $2 an ounce, though. Probably good for the crowd who likes their tea with some milk and sugar.

Nautilus has some decent teas—Mother of Earl, for example—but I can’t honestly say that this is one of them. Definitely fit last night’s mood of “eating dinner on the floor because I’m covered in cement dust and need some hot sustenance before showering and hopping into bed,” though.

I honestly wasn’t feeling like drinking any tea last night, but I was frigid from working outside for a little while and wanted something hot to take into the shower with me. (If you have a ledge big enough for a mug in your shower, shower tea is fantastic. 10/10 would recommend.) This is one of two decafs that I haven’t tried yet and smelled the least offensive.

Dry, it smells very pleasant, like a naturally sweet juice cocktail. When you dampen it with that boiling water, it…. smells identical to Fructis hair care products. If I was still using them, I would have instantly thought I managed to get some in the cup, because it tastes like them too in a non-soapy way. Is that a bad thing? Not sure! It certainly has the most flavor of any decaf tea I’ve ever tried. Not sure if I’ll be drinking it again, though, since I only made it halfway through my cup before I had to stop drinking the aroma of Fructis shampoo.