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Backlogging from Sunday.

This was the biggest reason I wanted to try the Shang sampler and I had such huge hopes for this one. Wild honeysuckle grows along the roadside where I grew up and where my parents still live. I still love to walk down the road and to pick it and taste the sweet nectar.

My dad has a convertible and puts the top down when we go out somewhere in the spring and summer and I always bug him to take the back roads so I can smell all the honeysuckle blooming. It grows everywhere, even along the highways. It is one of my favorite things about spring and early summer.

So, I opened the little sampler bag and smelled a slight sweet floral scent. The wet leaves smelled of sweet hay with a floral note. The taste was sweet hay, slightly floral with a nectar note in the aftertaste. It didn’t jump out and say “Hey! It’s me, Honeysuckle!” it was very subtle, I almost had to look for it. It was a light enough floral that had I not been told it was honeysuckle I may not have guessed it was.

I had too high of expectations for this tea to live up to. I was expecting it to be similar to jasmine teas, to be able to scent and taste the floral notes and go “Yes! That is honeysuckle!” to be blown away. Unfortunately this tea is not that for me.

Even though my expectations were way too high for this, after getting past the fact that I was not going to be blown away by honeysuckle, this was a good white tea with a soft floral note added to it. It was more like the tea picked up the floral notes by growing in close proximity than actually being added to the tea, that’s how soft the floral notes are.