Nope, not that Marco Polo, or even an “hommage”.
Red tea IMO is rooibos, but this is absolutely not rooibos but real tea. From description, twice fermented, I think this is a pu-erh, a type of tea of which I have drank very little (so far!). This is flavoured with red pepper, pink pepper and cardamom, and it is absolutely lovely. It is spicy, but not too hot (piquant) and the spice is very well balanced, none of the peppers or the cardamom rules. And it´s very tea-ey, earthy and deep, but not too much. If this is pu-erh, I am converted.
Preparation
Comments
I believe, in China, they refer to black tea as red tea. Oolong, amusingly, is blue tea which I think is just for the purpose of sticking to the colour scheme. :)
I did not know that. and makes sense, normal black tea is often reddish ( apart maybe from builder´s tea and similar). On the store they called black tea black and oolong oolong, so I was a bit baffled about the red tea. The owner said it was twice fermented, so probably some type of pu-erh – if it is, I am converted!
I’m not aware of there being a colour for pu-erh as well. I’d say that usually turns out redder than blacks. I agree that ‘twice fermented’ sounds pu-erh-y. If it was just a black one, doing it twice wouldn’t really make any sense.
I believe, in China, they refer to black tea as red tea. Oolong, amusingly, is blue tea which I think is just for the purpose of sticking to the colour scheme. :)
I did not know that. and makes sense, normal black tea is often reddish ( apart maybe from builder´s tea and similar). On the store they called black tea black and oolong oolong, so I was a bit baffled about the red tea. The owner said it was twice fermented, so probably some type of pu-erh – if it is, I am converted!
I’m not aware of there being a colour for pu-erh as well. I’d say that usually turns out redder than blacks. I agree that ‘twice fermented’ sounds pu-erh-y. If it was just a black one, doing it twice wouldn’t really make any sense.
The odd thing is that while this was shelved along with their pu-erhs the pu-erhs were called pu-erh and not read tea. Still odd. But I liked it a lot.