I received a sample of this as a prize for winning RiverTea’s “What would you do for the last 100g of your favourite tea” contest! I’ve been slowly working through trying the teas they sent me during my days off, since that’s when I feel I have time to sit down and properly enjoy them. However, I wont have a day off until Christmas Eve and I do have all evening now, so I figured I’d give this one a go!
Actually, I had planned to try out Prairie Berry for the first time today, but after getting paid today I was able to pick up a prepaid Visa card for some tea orders, and now that RiverTea’s website has launched I really wanted to try my last two samples so I can see if it’s ‘imperative’ I include larger quantities with my first order from them. Because of that, I changed my mind and brewed this up instead.
Dry, the smell of this one is kind of subtle, with some super light fruity notes that could be considered cherry. I did take a picture of the leaf for this one a while ago (on my cell, so it’s a sorta crappy picture) so I’ll edit that into my tasting note a little later on tonight. I have to find the usb cord for my phone first…
For preparation, I stuck with the guide on the sample package because, thus far, the provided guides have yielded good results, IMO. That meant 1 tsp. of leaf, in boiling water for four minutes. This is actually the first tea I’ve made from RiverTea to have a liquor that, visually, might be considered unappealing by some. The reason for that is that there’s a considerable amount of oily bubbles on the surface of the liquor. I’m not bothered by that, but I know there are other people who would be, although that happens with most chocolate blends.
The steeped smell is much more cherry! I’m kind of out of it at the moment, so I’m sort of struggling with putting my thoughts into legible words. So, I’ll just list what it’s not? I don’t smell medicinal cough syrup cherry, so yay for that! And, it’s not smelling piercingly tart – so that’s good. It’s not ridiculously sweet like a maraschino cherry either. I think the best way to describe it would be by saying it’s some sort of inbetween of sweet cherry and lightly sour cherry. Like, a cherry compote or pie type filling? Anyway – it smells very good. The chocolate smells quite light, in comparison.
In taste, the first thing I noticed was the chocolate. It’s a nice kind of “milk chocolate” – very smooth. The cherry follows pretty quickly – this time as a sweeter cherry tempered by the chocolate, with a sharper kind of sour bite that quickly pierces through (I found this kind of sharpness got stronger the cooler the tea got). The rose kind of sits in the background for the most part, but lingers along with subtle cherry notes in the aftertaste.
In my mind, I’m comparing this to DAVIDsTEA’s Love Tea #7 since that tea has many things in common. Firstly, they’re both chocolate and rose teas with black bases. The difference is that Love Tea #7 uses strawberry, and this has cherry. In deciding whether or not I’ll be adding this to my eventual RiverTea order, I want to take into comparison which I would be more likely to reach for. Love Tea #7 is a tea I very much love, and one I always have on hand – but if I thought this was better I might switch things up and stock this instead. However, I do think I prefer Love Tea #7 more – it just seems much more smooth and balanced, comparatively.
However, this is still really good! I’ll happily finish the sample that RiverTea was generous to send to me, and if I was ever able to acquire this again in sample size I don’t think I would hesitate to do so.
