The Skinny Tea Co™

Note to self: stop trying to drink teas you like when you’ve got plague.

Because seriously, last night I made a cup of Black Orchid and it tasted like nothing, I made a cup of Jo Grant in the afternoon and it tasted vaguely of ginger, and I made a cup of this just now and it tastes like bubble gum once you’ve been chewing it WAY too long and ought to have given up ages ago and it’s stopped really tasting of anything. Like that. My tastebuds disappoint me today. I keep trying to drink things I think will be comforting and I can’t taste them properly through my snuffly nose! No fair!

:(

Ok, this is good. Apparently there’s a dusting of raw cacao on this tea, giving it its chocolate aroma and flavour, and to be fair, it does smell an awful lot more like chocolate than a lot of chocolate-flavoured teas. It’s a light brew, but still definitely tastes of chocolate floating over a decent oolong, with a dry mouthfeel and hints of malty ovaltine and, in later steeps, the return of tasty cardboard. I’m still not convinced it’s doing anything significant to detox me, because I think detoxes are unnecessary and dumb, and I am DEFINITELY no skinnier. But while this is by no means a substitute for actual chocolate (and I don’t think substituting healthy versions of bad things you like to eat works anyway, because it’s never more than a shallow imitation) but man, it’s a nice cup of tea. Shame it’s backed by all these price-inflating health claims, though, or I’d probably buy a lot more of it.

Picked this one up again because it’s good to have something in the office I can resteep like 4 times in a day and is best unsweetened.

Especially as I’ve had two Christmas lunches now, and we just keep eating Yorkshire puddings at home, and I keep baking gingerbread, and I feel like SOME aspect of my life needs to be at least a little virtuous, as I feel like a horrible heffalump just at the moment. Ho hum.

This is so weird and tasty, though. Fragrant green oolong with light astringency and overtones of buttery basmati rice. Smells exactly like shortbread, though. It’s wild. Expensive, but if you ignore the brewing instructions and just keep resteeping like a teaspoon of leaves throughout the day, it’s really not that horrific.

Also, oh man. Blood test yesterday morning has left me with a nice big purple bruise inside my right elbow, and my arm’s all randomly sore when I try to use it. Fun! I sure hope they don’t need any more of my blood. I might run out!

Ok, so this tea is WACKY.

I grant that, opening the eensy weensy little sample sachet I ordered and breathing in deeply, this tea really does smell uncannily like good shortbread: it’s got that nutty, buttery, biscuity light sweet fragrance down so perfectly that if I were blindfolded, I don’t think I’d be able to tell the difference between this and an actual piece of shortbread based on smell.

And then there’s the flavour.

It’s not the same sort of let down that you get when a tea smells really potent and tastes like a cup of lightly astringent water that may once have been homeopathically exposed to a molecule of flavour. It’s definitely got a taste, it’s just a weird divergence from its dry smell – the flavour isn’t sweet at all, and that shortbready note is overtaken by masses of roasty butter that almost tows a savoury-sweet line instead. If I had to compare it to anything, it would be a fragrant lovechild of buttery popcorn and buttery basmati rice, so there’s a hint of an inherent underlying sweetness, but also at times it almost feels like there’s a bit of salt going on as well? WACKY.

And it’s actually really, really nice. I’m on like my fifth resteep now and the buttery popcorn flavour is just now finally giving way to that this-tea-is-nearly-spent cardboard taste. So weird. My mouth is confused.

Ok, so I do actually get strawberry jam out of this one. Indeed, I get strawberry jam in this one well into the third or fourth steep, beyond which point it’s fully superceded by lightly sweet, floral oolong and occasional hints of tasty cardboard.

(No really, tasty cardboard. I think that’s the slightly vegetal undertones melding with a noticeably dry mouthfeel?)

I still think it costs more than it’s worth, but I get a good 7 infusions out of a scant spoonful of leaves, and could probably keep going if 7 wasn’t the limit of cups of tea I can get through in a work day!

So yeah, decent cuppa. I still don’t think it will make me any healthier than any other tea, but I like things that taste like jam, so that’ll do.

I think I see what they’re doing here: they’re naming these flavours in ways that appeal to people who wish they were eating ice cream and biscuits and stuff instead of drinking tea, and definitely not serious dedicated tea drinkers. Because I really don’t get how this is ice cream.

The scent of the tea leaves does admittedly have a curious buttery, creamy fragrance – like some serious naturally sweet high-fat dairy cream action going on up in there, maybe even cheesecake. Like wowzers. But judging by the name of it, I’d have expected this to translate into a seriously creamy mouthfeel and masses of ice creamy flavour, and I just can’t find it at all.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice tea, but I’m not getting that WOW BOOM THIS IS LIKE DRINKING HOT ICE CREAM WHAT THE NUTS IS HAPPENING IN MY MOUTH factor you’d expect from something calling itself ice cream tea. It’s got a nicely creamy, green oolong taste, a bit astringent and a touch of melony vegetables toward the end, and the speed with which I’m getting through my second steep of it is a testament to the fact that I find it pleasant. I just can’t give it top marks, though, because while it’s nice, it just doesn’t deliver what it says on the tin.

And I still don’t believe it’s really significantly better for me than drinking an oolong that’s just as nice and costs a fraction.

I should like to begin by saying that I think detoxes are bunk. It’s not rocket science that going from weeks of holiday binge-fests to seaweed salad and steamed fish, you’re going to feel a lot less bogged down. Does the tea really make a difference? Am I going to get masses healthier than I already am by swapping out my usual daily cuppas with this?

For me, I’m guessing probably not: I already drink like 6 cups of unsweetened tea in a day (whatever oolong or green I have to hand at the office, and usually a pu erh in the afternoon when I need something more robust) and keep my sweet drinks to a minimum. But the prospect of interestingly flavoured oolongs in handy little packets I can keep at work that ship from the UK was enticing, so here we are.

Well. Mostly it smells green and peachy-floral, though I think I prefer this to if it had been so strongly flavoured that you can’t taste the tea under it. And this holds up in the brew – so much so that it tastes more like a straight green oolong with semi-prominent flowery peach notes and that characteristic creamy flavour/texture you get from a good light oolong. Which is probably for the best, as it so happens that it’s a really nice tasting oolong. Is it worth the price tag? Possibly moreso now that I know the third steep is as tasty as the first and as such the sample baggie will stretch out to way more than a day’s supply (still a nice pale green-gold and pleasantly fragrant enough that I’m going for a fourth) but considering that I’m not convinced it’s THAT much more healthy than regular tea, I doubt it’s going to become a tea cupboard staple.

That said, I do have a few other flavours to get through…