Lilac Blend

Full review tomorrow April 7th on http://sororiteasisters.com/ but for now let me just say …

Lilac Blend from Strand Tea Company has me just beaming with happiness. It is a beautiful sun shiny day outside, I am looking at my first flowers of the year, although they are daffodils, not lilacs, and dreamily sipping on such a delightful surprise! I love lilacs, they are so very fragrant and beautiful. This tea speaks to my sensibilities of summer, flowers, and yet there is a wonderful, surprising fruitiness as well. Mmmmm, so good!

Lilac from Strand Tea Company has a full mouthfeel nearly creamy. Add a splash of milk and you have a dessert tea for sure, oh so creamy and delicious! The mouthfeel is surprisingly heavy for what one would think is a light dainty tea. This tea has some heft to it.

And the taste? Can it match up to all my self imposed hype? Why yes, it can! It is sweet – like honey, fruity, wonderful berry notes, almost a blueberry flavor but I get some deep red berry notes in here too. It tastes wine like, a bit like a blueberry mead tea.

A BIG THANK YOU TO Aplhakitty for sharing this with me!

Thanks to Alphakitty I was able to try this one and really enjoyed it! I agree with what Alphakitty said with it smelling and tasting both fruity and floral. I think it was a bit more fruity than floral taste-wise and it did taste like a berry of some sort. At the very least blueberry-esque but maybe even a berry-combo based around that blueberry! teehee!

Regardless…I found it to be a tasty cup. I was surprised it wasn’t more focused on the lilac but, personally, I was ok with that. Others REALLY interested in a lilac-specific tea might think differently.

I bought this a bit impulsively—I love floral teas but hadn’t seen a lilac blend yet, so of course I had to try it out! I have lilacs in my front yard and the smell reminds me of beautiful warm spring nights, so I was hoping this tea would evoke the same feelings. Before I rate the actual tea I’d like to mention what a pleasant shopping experience I had with Strand—they actually charged me LESS for shipping than it actually cost (paid $4.95, label said it was $5.15). This might be a small thing, but high shipping charges will generally make me not want to shop at a company. They also sent a very generously sized sample even though I only bought one type of tea, and cookies! I’ve never received cookies along with a tea package, but they do fit rather well together so it was a nice surprise.

Well, on to the actual tea! I was a bit worried about this when I opened the bag, as it smelled really fake and fruity, with no trace of lilac at all. Thankfully the fake-ness disappeared once it was brewed, but it still smelled very fruity. And indeed, the actual tea tastes like a mix between a light floral blend and blueberry. I personally love blueberry, so this was more of a nice surprise than a bad one. The floral taste I suppose is lilac—it doesn’t taste like the smell the way jasmine does, and it’s very soft but still there. It’s sweeter than other floral blends I’ve tried, and very subtle. Going to try this iced soon, I think it would be a great summer beverage.

EDIT: On a hunch, I added a splash of milk to my second cup. Tasted like a blueberry muffin! Bumping up the rating a bit: this wasn’t what I expected at all, but it’s delicious.

Second tea of the day! Going to try as many during my time off this week since I’ve been slacking. This is another sample I received from Kasumi, and this is my first time trying a floral blend!

I taste the floral/lilac but more than that I taste something fruity? I like it, though! I think it’s a nice introduction to floral tea blends.

It also smells amazeballs.

Backlog:

I really liked this one. Visually, it’s a beautiful tea, and it has a lovely fragrance and it tastes good too. Nicely round, creamy texture, sweet with notes of caramel and honey. The floral notes are not sharp and don’t taste perfume-ish.

I like it.