Sampler Sipdown September! The third sampler of the Harry Potter teas for the House Cup… OF TEA!
This is another of the Malfoy Tea Emporium blends, Lovegood representing House Ravenclaw, and this tea is a fruity pina colada blend with a rooibos/black tea base, vanilla and creme flavoring, and topped off with sprinkles. The dry leaf smells like creme soda and pineapple!
The tea steeps up a warm caramel color. The scent of the brewed tea still reminds me a lot of creme soda, though now I’m getting a lot more of a coconut aroma from the brew. The rooibos and black tea create a base that is somewhat sweet, somewhat malty, and quite pleasant. The flavor of the tea is naturally sweet without being overbearing, and reminds me a lot of the Creme au Caramel Rooibos by Metropolitan Tea Company in body and flavor. The main difference between the two teas comes in the finish, as that tea left very distinct toffee notes on the tongue, and this tea has a pina coloda flavor that lingers with every sip. It isn’t hard to pick out the notes of pineapple in the tea and the sweet coconut flavor that lingers on the tongue.
A resteep just didn’t really hold up for me. The flavor extracts still had a bit to give, but the creamy, somewhat malty base was just so much weaker, even after an extra long steep, that the flavors just felt without a home suspended in a cup of weaksauce tea.
I loved the flavor of this tea! I’ll admit that I’m a fan of pineapple and coconut, so this was a flavor combination that simply worked for me. I enjoy sweet teas that require no sugar, and this tea has such low caffeine content it would make a nice late evening treat. I would happily enjoy having this tea in my collection, if it weren’t for the high price of the leaf. It’s sweet and creamy and the flavors balance nicely, truly a small indulgence in a cup. While some tea drinkers may not enjoy sweet brews like this, for me, I score this tea five points out of five for flavor!
This tea is a little too light, sweet, and lacking in ingredients that I would associate with stimulating the mind (one of the blind tea tasters actually guessed a different tea as the Ravenclaw tea for including mint, since it is a natural mental stimulant, which honestly was a very well thought-out guess!) to remind me very much of the House virtues of Ravenclaw. The black tea added to the base isn’t even enough to give the blend much of a stimulating effect to make this blend effective as a pick-me-up for a late night study session; it really is a relaxing dessert tea. And a relaxing dessert tea just doesn’t really make me think of wit, wisdom, and intellect. In this regard, I think a good mind-stimulating herbal blend mixed with some yerba mate for a bit of a caffeine-kick would’ve been a good choice.
But I can say that this tea blend is very creative and original in creating the flavor profile that it is after, and if there is any House that celebrates such talents, it is Ravenclaw. Blending the rooibos with just a touch of black tea created this perfect base that was naturally sweet but not overbearingly so, that pinch of black mellowing it just a bit and creating just a bit of maltiness. Adding the cake sprinkles gave the tea just the right sweetness so no other sweeteners were necessary. The ingredients seemed to be carefully chosen so their flavors would blend together to create that pina colada taste in a base reminescent of creme soda. There was certainly a lot of thought put into the selection of the blend, and that certainly doesn’t go unnoticed!
On a scale of 0-5, I’m awarding 2 points to Ravenclaw in this category.
As far as representing Luna Lovegood, parts of the blend seem to capture her eccentric nature, such as mixing two completely different types of tea together to create such a unique base, or including cake sprinkles in the blend, but other parts of the blend seem so carefully crafted to create just the right flavor with the use of both dry ingredients and natural flavoring, with far too much thought and planning to be considered an eccentricity at all. But then, perhaps that is just it; there is far more logical sense behind what seems an oddity or quirk.
The flavor is very sweet, and I can see this with Luna’s overall unfazed and accepting demeanor of those around her and her ability to comfort others. I can get an impression of her dreamy disposition from the creamy, carmelly tea. I think the only thing that would sell this more is if the pineapple added an edge of tartness to the blend, as Luna had a sense of loyalty that could bring out a bit of steel in her otherwise nonplussed demeanor.
Out of five points, I’m scoring Ravenclaw a 4 in this category.
The blind taste test results with the library staff rated the Lovegood tea with scores of 4, 4, 4, and 1, for a total of 13 House points! (One person in the blind taste test thought this tea was “way too sweet”… proof that everyone has very different tastes! This tea was my favorite, tastewise, of the bunch!)
Participants were also asked to guess which tea belonged to which House, after sampling all four teas. If any participants managed to guess a House correctly, it would score bonus points! Two participants guessed the Ravenclaw tea correctly, so that’s 10 bonus points to Ravenclaw! (One of the participants in the blind taste test, a Ravenclaw, liked this tea the best of the four sampled, so simply marked this tea as his House as a result and was right. Bonus points are bonus points no matter how they are gained!)
Here is the score:
Flavor Profile Score: 5
Representation of House Virtues: 2
Representation of Character Personality Traits: 4
Blind Taste Test Scores: 13
Bonus Points: 10
Total: 34
Amazing, House Ravenclaw! Only one more tea to go!
