Green Japanese Bamboo

Uhm, nom. This smells delicious in the bag, like a bamboo caramel fruit cup (although I have a feeling that particular flavour combination wouldn’t exactly fly out of the fruit cup aisle).

I kind of adore this, although I steeped it very sloppily, so it might just be a happy mistake. I mainly get bamboo and pineapple – a big, bold, juicy mid-mouth bamboo-pineapple, no drably elusive aftertaste phantasm.

Now I really want to try this iced. And also see if I can tease a few more fruit notes out of it with a longer steeping time.

[Sample gifted by my sweet friend T, October 2013.]

So December 14th was a green blend which we didn’t have yesterday because we had a lot of mulled wine and all round Christmas cheer instead with decorating the tree and whatnot. So there just wasn’t ‘space’ for a distinctly summer-y sounding blend.

Summer-y or not, though, this was one of those that I want to find in a product such as this calendar. Something that wouldn’t have caught my eye otherwise but that I might find interesting when tasting it. In other words, not something that I know I won’t like much.

It smells like sweeties when steeped. It’s a very fruity blend with dried fruit bits in (tropical) and large rose petals. Smells like winegums. This of course made me interested!

Unfortunately it doesn’t taste like sweeties. It tastes like… like… like… I’m not sure. I can taste the tropical fruits, pineapple in particular but also something else that I don’t really think I like much. It’s a quite grassy sort of flavour, which leads me to think about the bamboo. I’ve had bamboo in blends before and actually rather enjoyed it, so I don’t think it’s the bamboo alone that does it here. I think it’s more a question of, for me, the bamboo simply doesn’t play well with some of the other ingredients. The rose petals is giving it a fairly floral finish as well, which I’m not keen on either.

Another miss for me, then, but I’m quite pleased that it wasn’t a known dislike before I even tasted it!

As for today’s tea, I’m having a bit of a think about it. I’ve decided that in order to prevent things lying around for ages untasted, I must drink these in order. Today’s box however contained two satchets of their green mandarin blend, which I’ve already got loads of in a tin. So, is it okay to put those two satchets with the tin, or must they still be used before I can have tomorrow’s tea? Answers on a postcard, please. (To be frank, my decision will probably hinge on what tomorrow’s tea actually is)