Boston

lol I haven’t touched this tea because I have an intense hatred for a certain Boston sports team, especially its captain, so…I associate this tea with them. And you know, how that I think about it, I should have tried this when there was a lockout and I couldn’t care at all but now I am ready to get my hate back in full gear. VROOM VROOM.

Right, so I don’t mind cranberry but it’s definitely a flavor I won’t grab over other berries especially. But I’ll drink it…almond, on the other hand I actively try to avoid. Now I love to eat almonds. But I can’t do sweet almond, and I especially can’t do it in a tea. The best I have ever done with sweet almond is that I can put amaretto in pancakes. That is all. I seriously have a bottle of amaretto just for that and I rarely make pancakes. I also have no idea why I bought it in the first place. Probably some other recipe.

This does smell fantastic in the bag though. I got my friend a tin and it was even better in such a large amount.

So it definitely is not in your face cranberry at all, like I was hoping it might be. The almond flavor mixes in with the cranberry about mid-sip. At first it’s just absolutely disgusting like Zdeno Chara, but towards the end of the sip it is really reminiscent of granola. But getting to granola takes strong taste buds. I think maybe if the cranberry was just a bit more tart, I might be able to ignore that almond flavoring, but it’s not happening.

The more I try the more repulsive it tastes. I hate you almond.

PS thank you for this sample, Alphakitty

I am a big fan of Harney & Sons and I like their Paris and Florence teas. I ordered Boston! I forgot that the tea has cranberry flavors. When I opened the tin I was overwhelmed by an aroma that was not entirely pleasant: i put my finger on it: Paregoric soaked in cherry and stored in a humidor! I was a bit surprised by the intensity of this aroma and after sitting with it for a few minutes, I had to conclude: this is a concoction of paregoric, cherries, and some cigar tobacco.

Steeped, I smell the cranberry quite clearly. And the enticement of the paregoric has gone, taking with it my opium dreams (I was of the generation where mothers used paregoric as a catch-all medicine for their children—indeed I can remember trotting off to the drug store to buy her a bottle of paregoric and a package of Parliament cigarettes all for less than 50 cents).

So aside from being a blast to the past, Boston Tea proves to be a reasonably strong, robust black tea with cranberry aroma and flavor. I cannot pick on on the almond flavor specifically, but I do recommend this tea. After the moments of strangeness, the tea itself offers a generous tea/cranberry experience which is much more authentic than some of the other cranberry flavored teas I’ve sampled before. I think this would be a great tea to serve with a holiday dinner and a good tea to keep in stock. The aftertaste is delightfully cranberry too.

Au fond, my only disappointment is that the paregoric seems to have been a temporary illusion! I could also see mixing this tea 50/50 with Florence to sample the result.

All I get out of this one is base. Why, boston, why? There’s something fruity at the back, I wouldn’t identify it as cranberry at all. And I get no almond.

Used one DAVIDs perfect scoop to 8 oz off boiling water for 3 minutes. 1 scant tsp of sugar. It’s not astringent, brews quite dark, smells like base, not much else. Wtf.

This is a crowd favourite but I tell you that whatever this is in my cup can’t be that popular.

Thank you to the oh so wonderful TheTeafairy for sending me a sample and satisfying my curiousity. All I have to say is “what’s all the fuss?” . I have a bit more so I can try again another day. Maybe I expected too much.

Another sipdown. I finished the last of my organic Dragonwell from Teavivre yesterday and forgot to review it, but I hope I will meet it again in a future order. Not so much with this H & S tea, unfortunately.

I know that a lot of folks like this one, but it is just too artificial on the cranberry for my palate. I was longing for any of my other better blacks the whole time I was drinking this. I will stick with Paris when I am looking for fruity and wonderful. Goodbye, Boston Blend! I will not miss you! :)

Good morning Steepsterites,

This fine Saturday we are starting out with a gift from Dinosara and it’s another one of those Russian Roulette Brewings. Steep first, look it up second. Consequently my intuition landed me in a spot of trouble as it made me pick a tea which isn’t really a breakfast-suitable tea at all. At least, I would have been more likely to have it in the afternoon.

I was rescued, however, by that fact that once I tasted it, it didn’t seem quite so anachronistic at all. For some reason a tea with fruit and almonds in it manages to work quite well with our ritual weekend pancakes with apple bits in.

The aroma is largely almonds, I think, and then the cranberry underneath that adding a non-descript mahogany coloured fruity aspect to it. Bear in mind though that this is an almond aroma. It does not in any way, shape or form resemble marzipan, for which I am grateful. (I love marzipan, as well as just about any other type of confectionary (nearly) that you can think off, but I rather doubt it would have worked in this particular instance.)

This is one of those tea that does that funny switcheroo thing as it cools down, too. Now that I’m halfway through the cup and it’s heading towards Lukewarm Lane, it’s the cranberries who’s doing the driving and the almonds relocated to the backseat. I quite like it when a flavoured tea does that. It’s like you get the best of both, even if one does wish it could do so while the tea was still slightly warmer.

And that’s just the aroma.

In the flavour (which is a muddly orange, I think because of the almonds) it’s rather more even. I can find almonds and cranberries with equal ease, but I can’t really find the tea base very easily. Can’t be that interesting then, can it?

It’s very smooth and extremely well flavoured. Slightly heavy and super suitable for autumn. Thank you hugely, Dinosara! This was awesome!

At first sip, I am getting a lot of almond and black base. However, as I continue to drink, the cranberry and vanilla come through as well. It is sweet but not over the top and very pleasant. In future though, I think I will either drop the temperature or steeping time to tone down the base.

SIPDOWN! (233) Thank you cavocorax for sending some of this my way. This is a weird blend for me. I totally get the almond taste, and that’s delicious but then the cranberry taste is like HEY! HEY YOU! Yeah..i’m tlaking to YOU! LOOK AT ME! and of course i’m like “but i don’t wannnaaaaaa”

Yeah, that happened. True story and all that jazz. haha ok but really? I can see how a large number of people would like this tea. I think though, I prefer my rich creamy teas to not have fruit in them. It’s like those fruit and nut chocolate bars…what’s up with that? You’re enjoying the delicious creamy chocolate taste…the nuts blend in nicely with it and then there’s this fruity. right in the middle of all that goodness. BAH! and i like fruit…but not when it interupts my deliciousness…it’s like nuts in brownies.. ick. why ruin a good thing!

LOL so anyway this tea? I love the almond/creamy/deliciousness but i could do without the cranberriness of it all…which means this probably isn’t the team for me but its not a BAD cup of tea :) Thanks Cavo!

Mmmmmmmmm. This one tastes of cranberries and warmth. Wonderful with milk and sugar (and digestive biscuits). I could just picture being in Boston all bundled up in a tam and mittens and boots, stopping into Trident Booksellers to get a novel and sit in the cafe and read (and admire my vintage dress that I bought at Oona’s earlier in the day). Yes, I have fond memories of Boston :)

Ashmanra said that this is a more solitary tea (and Cranberry Autumn a more social one) and I couldn’t agree more. This is certainly the cozy one full of books and college campuses and window seats and wool, not the tromping through an apple orchard with your dear ones then baking a pie with them and making dinner too, chatting all the while (that’s Cranberry Autumn).

The flavored teas I best like are very evocative for me – they make me remember childhood, travel, seminal experiences, forevermoments. This tea is very very very evocative for me. Thank you Mr. Harney! and thank you ashmanra for sending me some! I love it!

I would go curl up and reread Leonard Cohen’s novel Beautiful Losers (the book I bought at Trident in Boston) but I am in the thick of Miss Read’s Thrush Green and can’t quite tear myself away!

Thank you to Nicole and Batrachoid for these samples!

This seems like a fall tea with cranberry and almonds. And since it is almost fall, time to try this!

Upon first sip, I get a bit of tart cranberry with almond and the black tea base coming through. The cranberry isn’t too tart though, just enough for it to be like real cranberries. I feel like I would want the almond to be just a little bit more prevalant here.

This is a great blend!

this came to me thanks to ifjuly. much thanks!

i don’t get notes of cranberry or of almond, though i do get some tones of strawberry and an element of cream (but not like the donut, lol). smells fruitier than it tastes, but still tastes quite decadent…. would i buy it myself? in the shadow of fruits d’alsace and the black lotus and any other number drop kick blends i’ve had lately (many but not all from europe) no. however, still makes a very nice cup and if i were in ifjuly’s living room i wouldn’t say ‘no’.