Happy Holiday

English Tea Shop Advent Calendar: Days 6 & 8

Huh. For a blend with SO. MANY. INGREDIENTS, I’m just… not getting much flavor. It smells gently spiced and pleasant enough, but it doesn’t taste like much of anything! There’s maaaybe a little fruitiness from the pomegranate or the lemongrass, but… that’s pretty much it. It actually reads as grape to me more than anything else. The spices are entirely missing, and even the green base is not doing much of anything. Meh.

Of all of the English Tea Shop advent teas I’ve tried so far, I think this has the longest list of ingredients, and most of them are completely undetectable. I’ve also noticed that a lot of them are quite similar in their ingredients, so I’m not too impressed with this one. The green tea base is weirdly more astringent than the last one was, I was hoping that a longer steep would bring out some more of the flavours but in the end I had to take the teabag out as the astringency was becoming more prominent. It’s mostly an average green tea with some nondescript fruitiness which I wouldn’t say tastes like pomegranate. I can kind of smell the cinnamon, and if I concentrate really hard I can just about convince myself that I can taste it, but the rest of the huge long list of ingredients fades into nothingness. Not my favourite!