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Sidebar – Yes, I have a tea (& coffee) cupboard, which has overflowing embarrassingly to boxes in my spare room! That is because the other trait I inherited from said grandmother is buying “stuff” for a rainy day, especially when there is an offer going. These two qualities mean that I am a pack-rat of the highest order, something that my beloved hubby has endured without complaint (or rather, only the occasional comment) since we met…
But I digress – so I have a moral imperative to wade through any tea, only disposing of it if has become completely undrinkable. So here I am, trying out the teas from my lovely presentation tin (T2 Sixteen Classics – sadly, discontinued) & while some teas have weathered the distance, others have become tainted by the other flavours, or lost their potency. I suspect this has suffered a bit of both.
I’m also a bit wary of Earl Grey after a fanatic flatmate tainted everything in our cupboard with the smell of her Earl Grey stash! And that included the food. I spent months eating bergamot scented EVERYTHING. Blech!
Much time has passed, & because I am getting back into tea again & Earl Grey is rightly a classic, I decided to get reaqcuainted…
First off – that hit of bergamot aroma was missing when I opened the tin. Not a good sign…
I brewed for 2 mins & the tea started looking suspiciously dark so I added my obligatory dash of milk (I really struggle with drinking tea black) & cautiously took my first sip.
Hmmm – a faint bergamot scent, along with a pretty robust but uninspiring black tea taste.
If it was new I would have given it no more than 50/100, but I have given it the benefit of the doubt and upped it by 20.
Sigh. This means I’ll have to obtain another sampler in order to give it a fair go…

I wanted to love this tea. I tried another rooibos, orange & cinnamon tea & really enjoyed it, but unfortunately it was a sample of a discontinued line.
So when I found a similar offering from trusty old Twinings, I thought, Wooo hooo!
The first smell of the dry bag was WHOOOAAA, cinnamon! There was little else.
Once infused the liquor was a lovely coppery colour & initially the aroma was completely opposite the dry bag smell – a divine strong orange, with occasional whiffs of cinnamon.
The taste was… disappointing. Thin, is how I’d describe it… Yes there was some orange, and a little cinnamon, even a bit of nuttiness from the rooibos, but there was something missing. It didn’t have the well-rounded mouthfeel of the other tea I’d tried.
My conclusion: to paraphrase Mr Darcy from Pride & Prejudice – “Tolerable, but not tasty enough to tempt me”… Another one for the “It’ll do until I find something I like better” list.

My quest continues…

NOTE – This is not the same as the UK (& USA?) Orange & Cinnamon Spice.

Yay! My first tasting note on my new tea adventure!
I had high hopes for this blend – I absolutely love the tart flavour of cranberry (favourite cocktail, a Woo Woo, or Vodka, Cranberry & Cointreau for those of you who don’t know). And pomegranate comes in close, so what’s not to like, right?
The liquor was a deep cherry red, almost like a good shiraz, and the aroma was really rich & well-rounded. The cranberry came through strongly, but there wasn’t much pomegranate there.
Now for the taste – which was a bit of let down…
The strongest flavour was hibiscus (which I don’t mind, but it wasn’t the point of choosing this tea). But just when I was thinking, meh, there was the taste of cranberry on the back of the palate, which lifted the whole mouthfeel to refreshing. I never detected that pomegranate though!
So I’m still searching for the perfect cranberry (& pomegranate) tea, but this is a good option in the meantime.