Last cup of the night, and although it’s caffeine free, I think this one may be a bit too fruity to use as my bedtime drink in the future. I also can’t imagine cold brewing this (although I’ll probably have to try now. I’ve mentioned that) so it’ll probably wait around in my drawer for a few months until the colder weather kicks in again.
I bought this as part of Bluebird’s pick-n-mix sample selection, as there were four teas I really wanted to try and I had an extra space to fill. So overall, I wasn’t getting my hopes up too high for this one, although it was still pretty high on my list of Bluebird’s teas to try. My flatmate Sam moved out today (it’s the end of the school year and he’s moving to Amsterdam on a placement soon) and his girlfriend Amy, another flatmate, wasn’t feeling too great so I obviously took the opportunity to use tea as a means of settling her stomach. After rifling through my drawers, she picked several teas out to try including this one, which I brewed for after our supper of freshly baked cookies. If she hadn’t picked it out, there’s a chance this could have sat in my drawer untouched for a couple of months.
The dry mix smells beautiful, and looks it too. Bluebird are great because their teas not only taste great, but look great too and the huge chunks of ingredients make them just gorgeous to look at. I say it every time I have a Bluebird tea, but I really do marvel at how pretty they are. I brewed it in my ingenuiTEA and it was pretty cool to see all the bits floating around and expanding.
In the time it’s taken me to type the note up so far, my tea has gone cold but I don’t think the flavours have changed much. It is, however, as I had suspected, better warm. The bright red colour when brewed made me wary that the tea may be overpoweringly hibiscus-y, but it’s actually a pretty mellow tartness just chilling with the other flavours rather than overpowering them. There’s something weird about this blend which I just can’t place, but I’m pretty sure I like it. In fact, I’m sure I like it, I’m just not sure I can place the flavour or could explain why. Pineapple and coconut are always a winner together in my opinion, although I was interested to see what I thought of this tea since coconut is generally a favourite flavour of mine in tea, whereas I’m yet to find a pineapple tea which I can drink happily – or I was until this, anyway. The flavours are immediately present and reminiscent of a piña colada, but the lemongrass is also prominent and adds an interesting extra dimension. This element kind of reminds me of fragrant Thai rice, and I suppose the reason it works so well could be that the coconut goes with both pineapple and lemongrass flavours effortlessly. I imagine it might be quite an odd combination without the coconut. The hibiscus keeps it tart (I added a sugar, although I shouldn’t really) and the rose petals add a wonderfully floral aftertaste. I am constantly amazed by the skill some tea blenders show, and Bluebird are no exception. This blend is truly inspired, and one of the more intriguing blends I have had the pleasure of trying.
EDIT: As it cools, I have just noticed, there is a kind of honey sweetness on the finish of the sip. Paired with the lemongrass, which remains throughout the sip, this oddly enough reminds me of those lemon flavoured throat sweets with the honey inside that you suck when you have a cold. Not in a bad way, though, it’s not particularly medicinal. It’s more like what those throat sweets would taste like if they were actual sweets, instead.
