I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting from this tea. This is my first cup and I just grabbed the first thing out of my box of blacks that I hadn’t tried before. I had assumed that this was a straight black blend, but when I got the cup steeped, lo and behold, there was a lot of bright green leaf in there.
Initial impressions on the nose were a lot of malt and fruit, which is borne out on the palette. Nice, round malty flavour, a touch of vegetal and lots of distinct black currant.
Black currant is one of my favourite fruits, but I never like it in tea as much as I feel like I should. I drank the first few sips of this straight, and then something about the black currant flavour was bugging me, so I added some milk and sugar, which has made it a much more enjoyable cup to sip in the morning.
I’m not in love with this, but I’ll definitely drink it again, and experiment with steeping it more like a green, though with steeping it like a black there was no astringency or bitterness.
Flavors: Black Currant, Fruity, Malt, Vegetal