It’s Mother’s Day, and I am making my mom a lemon loaf. It’s her favorite baked good but she usually gets it at Starbucks, which is good if you’re in a rush but good lord do they overload it with sugar and also use lemon “flavoring” instead of the actual, well… lemon! So I decided to make her the real stuff with much less sugar, heaps of lemon zest, and cream instead of oil. Well, I ended up with a ton of extra cream for some reason even though I only got one of those teeny containers so of course I decided to put some in tea! I never put cream in my tea (milk or nothing) so I thought it would be a decadent treat perfect for Mother’s Day!
This is (fittingly) my mom’s tea—I also placed an order at NMTC but passed up this blend even though I love rose because I thought it would be too similar to my Princess Grey. Sadly, I was wrong—but not so sadly, they still have free shipping until May 31st so I feel like some of this will be coming home to me. I thought this would be a good “converter” for my mom—you can have it with milk & sugar and it’s pretty strong. She’s a coffee person but is trying to switch to tea to cut down on both caffeine and sugar (she puts in so much!).
When I opened the bag I was hit by a very, very strong rose flavor—it was almost overwhelming. I love perfume-y teas but not when they taste like perfume (if that makes any sense)-and this really had an “essential oil, gonna rub it on my wrists” kind of smell. Thankfully it mellowed out a lot once it was brewed, and is nice and richly floral. The rose actually isn’t nearly as prominent as I thought it would be, and there’s still the bergamont flavor from the “earl grey” part of this tea. The base is nice and gentle—I like assertive teas, but not for a soft tea like this. It’s so… ladylike! It makes me feel like a fancy British lady, though I am not at all British. The cream makes it soooo good, even though I used a teeny bit. I already have a straight-up rose tea so I don’t really NEED this one, but it’s good enough that I want to get it anyway.