Floral Tea

When people talk about rose being perfume-y this is for sure the kind of flavour I have in my head. It’s a rose blend to the extreme. Very fragrant with a delicate feeling liquor, but a whammy of a floral taste. Still drinkable, but only because I do really enjoy the taste of rose. I think you have to for a blend like this one.

This was really, really nice! It’s a light to medium body that’s a bit kind of generically herbal in a soothing way. I really liked that this was flavourful but still quite light and soft feeling. The anise is really clear but doesn’t have the almost forceful, coating sweetness that it so often associated with star anise. The coconut is creamy in taste, but not really thick in mouthfeel which stops the blend from accidentally feeling oily/fatty or excessively decadent. It’s just… fresh!

Probably my favourite blend from Floral Tea so far, and they’ve actually all been pretty spot on with their flavours!

I’ll have to revisit this outside of advent season because it was a cup of tea I ended up making very late at night after finishing all my advent responsibilities for the day. We’ve reached the point with advents where I feel a bit like a zombie. Even though the teas are different each day, there’s an element of “routine” to the whole thing that is brutally exhausting – you start to feel like you don’t have the time or mental energy for anything else.

Anyway; all that to say that I was not intellectually present when I drank this cup of tea. I vaguely remember that it was not very honey like in anyway and that there was a pithier quality, but I don’t even recall if I enjoyed that or not!? And if hadn’t written down that I’d drank it I probably wouldn’t have even remembered.

Had this last week as a late night cuppa. It’s one of the teas I picked up at the MTL Tea Festival. This company really intrigued me with their selection of flavoured florals, and when I spoke to the gentleman at the booth this is the one he said was his personal favourite – so I had to try it!

I was surprised how distinct the blueberry note was. It’s not that it was an intense/strongly flavoured tisane or really sweetly blueberry flavoured; the blend itself was very soft and delicate. No, the surprise came from the fact that the blueberry could be so distinct in taste despite the very soft, fragility of the cup. I appreciate that immensely though; the lighter floral flavour was very relaxing and soothing. Sometimes it feels like the trade of with relaxing and softer blends is that you have to sacrifice more fun or fruity flavours, but I don’t think that needs to be the case and I felt like this tea sort of proved that in some ways.

Sipdown (1911)!

I picked up a handful of teas from this company during the Tea Festival, but this is actually one that I received as a free sample – just a single cup worth. It was kind of shockingly nice, and I don’t mean that as a slight towards the tea. It’s more than chocolate blends don’t usually resonate very strongly with me right away but someone about this one stood out. I think it was mainly that it did taste sweetly of chocolate but there was also clearly something else. It was hard to put my finger on what that other thing was though; at times it was like a honey or caramel flavour and sometimes it was more nutty, like an almond nougat. It worked very well with the more liqueur-like chocolate notes though.

Made a mug of this last night though I kind of forgot about it, and by the time I ended up remembering it had cooled down to the perfect temperature to slurp it all back in one big, fluid and cozy gulp. Quite chamomile forward upfront, but then it eased into a more baked apple type of flavour before finishing with a gentle, ever so sweet caramel note that softly lingered on the palate after swallowing. Probably for the best I essentially chugged this – I got to experience the caramel apple profile without dwelling too long on the chamomile notes I’m less fond of.

Sipped on this when I got home from the festival. I actually ended up buying four different little tubes of flower based herbal tea from this stand. They were the only stand at the festival that wasn’t letting people smell their teas or sampling and I’m sure that, in a lot of ways, that probably worked against them for most people. For me, it may have been a surprisingly win on their side because my curiosity got the best of me and I just had to grab some of the more interesting sounding blends…

I am generally not a fan of chamomile and I actually said this when I was speaking to the gentleman at their booth. It could have totally just been salesmanship, but generally I like to think that tea people err on the side of honesty so when he said “Me too, but I actually find this is a chamomile that works really well for people who are turned off by the usual dusty flavour of chamomile” I decided to believe him. Mostly, though, I think I was just interested in the idea of a caramel apple flavoured chamomile.

You know what, though!? It did taste a lot like chamomile but I think he was pretty spot on that it lacked a lot of the heavy musty/dirty floral quality that it the primary thing I dislike about chamomile tea. Instead there was more of the sweeter honey-like soft elements of chamomile. Still maybe a biiiitttt too much chamomile for my tastes but hard to be mad at that because it’s supposed to be chamomile. That’s like buying a cinnamon tea and saying “tasted like cinnamon, so not for me”. I am the hypocrisy in this situation, not the tea.

Regardless, the caramel apple flavour was great! Not heavily sweet but pretty distinct. Really loved how much of a fresh apple vibe it gave off. People like to say a lot that chamomile has apple notes and I’ve never really got that, but as I was drinking this tea I had a moment of realization where (for the first time) I sort of saw what they were saying.