Sally's Secret

I am trying to accomplish some more sip downs, especially of older teas. I do not list my samples in my cupboard, so what you see does not include the three boxes of samples that are lying about.

This seemed a good one to use today for one last cuppa hot, and then ice the rest.

I maintain my earlier statements about this tea. This is not the same base as Harney’s Rose Scented, which is my favorite rose tea, but rather this is more like Upton’s Rose Congou with a hint of bergamot added. Good stuff, a little more gutsy than Rose Scented, and with a little more morning “Oomph.”

I love the aroma this tea produces while steeping. It smells like walking into a high end spa. The rose is fragrant and mixes nicely with the bergamot. The bergamot surprisingly doesn’t take on any over the top floral notes, it plays nicely in the background. The rose is a beautiful rose. I enjoy sipping on rose teas when I need a nice relaxing “me” break. This tea definitely provides that relaxing metaphorical sigh of relief my body needs. Ahhhhh.

Yay! Harney and Sons samples came in today! I think at this point I have hyped Florence up so much in my head that there is no way that it can ever live up to it, so I’m putting off trying it for now. (maybe later on today, although I have to admit, ever since figuring out how to properly make 52 teas’ coconut cream pie, I’ve been kind of craving it)

The idea of adding rosebuds to Earl Gray appeals to me a great deal, it seems that, like with Earl Grey Blue Flower, it would add another dimension to the Earl Gray that would allow me to indulge in my favorite tea but with some variation. Now I associate rose with a pretty strong scent and flavor, but this tea seems to be lacking both. Perhaps it’s just that I’m eating curry and this tea is too delicate for it, but I am not really getting ANYTHING out of it except an odd spiciness.

As it cools, I start to get both aroma and flavor, so perhaps I was just being too impatient. At the moment, it is being a pretty standard earl grey – although the spiciness is making me suspicious that there is secretly lavender inside. There IS something else there, but I can’t quite pin it down. Is it fruity? Is it floral? Is it both? Is it neither? Dunno!

The tea grows on me as I drink it, but the flavor continues to be a coy little bugger. My mum wanted to know if it was any good since she’s also been looking for some variations on the theme of Earl Gray, but right now I don’t know what to tell her. I’m glad the sample has enough for several cups!

Next time hopefully I’ll remember to try and make this stronger.

I love Harney’s earl grey, and I LOVE roses in my tea, but in this case they kind of cancel each other out. I prefer just the earl grey or just the rose scented (ooooh), but it’s still nice.

It is too funny that as I am in the process of using this one up…I am growing to like it more. If it just did not smell so soapy dry, it would be on the repurchase list. At least I have several more afternoons of this tea left……

my first of 5 tea orders arrived! between all the orders PLUS 2 new tea cups i’m obviously preparing for the coming winter months. tea and kindles is all i ever need. ever.
i’m so in love with this stuff.

i ordered this one especially for my sister. and lucky her, they sent me two 3oz tins for the price of one :) she loves earl grey and she loves rose teas and i just know for sure that she’s gonna love this one. i anticipate that half of it will be gone within 2 weeks time, easy.

IDK why but i added honey and milk to this first cup. things are going to crazy!

i have all this new tea to taste and i finally figured out how to get steepster working on my work computer again. everything has fallen into place.

here is a list of other things i want to tell you
- i am still reading all the Avengers and Sherlock fan fic
- i got into the Berlin Marathon so i will be going back to Europe in september
- at the encouragement of a friend, i now get monthly massages

I’m a sucker for anything roses, and the idea of rose + Earl Grey seemed interesting to me. It works with lavender so why not rose?

The roses sure make the tea look pretty. :-) The contrast between the dark tea and the pinky/red rose petals is lovely. It reminds me a little of a fancy dress for a little girl, dark velvet with tiny pink rosettes.

I don’t smell rose in the sample pouch, though. This makes me wonder whether that means the rose is decorative only? I just finished trying the Upton Earl Grey Blue Flower where that was true, so I suppose it is possible. I do smell bergamot in the dry tea, and I do smell something else, but I can’t identify it.

I think I may be getting some rose fragrance in the aroma of the tea, but perhaps it is just wishful thinking. The bergamot isn’t at all strong. The tea smells mild and slightly sweet.

As I drink, I get a rose note in the aroma. It isn’t very strong at all, but it is pretty. It is harder to identify in the taste, but I do believe it is there around the edges of the sip. I had expected it to be stronger, but now I’m thinking maybe the reason it isn’t is because it wouldn’t work that way? When I tease out the rose in the aroma and the flavor, I can also get a hint of how easy it would be for a stronger rose to overpower everything else at work in this tea, and how having to increase the bergamot would lead to escalating the rose flavor and so on until the end result was mutual assured destruction.

So it’s subtle. But I think it is because it has to be, not because of a failing in the blend. As with the Upton Chocolate Earl Grey, I really like the idea of this tea. The question I need to answer for myself is whether for my own palate it’s too subtle to be worth it, and I’m not ready to answer that yet. Even as I write this, I’m tasting the rose a little more as the tea cools, and the more I taste it, the more the answer leans toward yes.

Trying this blend for the first time. It is so good. A remarkable blending of flavors – the rose and the bergamot compliment each other very well.

The black tea is delicious – brisk, not bitter, and very little astringency. The rose and the bergamot are in lovely harmony here, with the sweetness of the rose softening the bergamot just so, and the bergamot enhancing the qualities of the rose. I like this very much.

On first smell, this tea is a strong Earl Grey. It smells very similar to Harney’s earl grey supreme. I was a little disappointed as I was waiting for the secret part to jump out. After brewing, the tea smelled of very sweet bergamot, almost a fruity pebbles/fruit loops kind of smell. On first sip it was simply an earl grey. A good earl grey but I still wasn’t getting the secret part of it so got disappointed. After the tea cooled for a few minutes, the flavour profile definitely changed. There was a bold black base, with a medium strong bergamot taste, and this different kind of sweetness to it. It wasn’t the usual bergamot sweetness. After a few more sips the sweetness became floral. I found the secret! The sweet rose petals mix very nice with the bergamot and black base. It is not a super strong earl grey, so for anyone that is scared of the earl, it is a good one to start with as the rose really mellows the bergamot.

This is a tea that I was dying to try. I love Earl Grey, I love rose, what’s not to like? So I got a sample pack from Harney and tried it… and I didn’t like it at all. This was before I figured out that if I put 2 tsp instead of 1.5 tsp in my 12 oz Kati cup, Harney black teas taste way bitter to me no matter how long the steep. This time, with my proper brewing parameters, it’s much better. There’s still a hint of bitterness (I think I might drop the temp on my Harney blacks and see if that takes care of it) and astringency, but now I can actually taste the rose and it seems to play well with the bergamot, but I don’t get a lot of citrusy bergamot from this one. Overall a decent tea, but not my favorite Earl Grey blend. There are some Harney teas that I love love love, but I’m finding there are others (like this one) where the black tea base just isn’t right for me. Oh well, I guess rose and Earl Grey is one of those combos I will be looking for in other places.