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Auggy ruined this tea for me, and I mean that in the nicest way possible!

I have a feeling I would have loved this tea, had I never tasted the sample Auggy sent me of SerendipiTEA’s Colonille.

But let’s talk about this tea alone. Anyway, when opened, the little packet exuded a scent of warm vanilla. Not very overpowering at all, but pretty natural-smelling. Very, very happy-making indeed. No sad panda over here! The leaves are fairly standard sized, and you can clearly pick out the vanilla bean. So far, off to a good start!

The wet leaves and the infusion itself smell surprisingly similar to Colonille! So I was pretty excited. Could it be? Another Colonille? Alas, it wasn’t meant to be. Make no mistake, this one tastes really good at first. But the vanilla is pretty mild, and the black tea base here is nothing special. I actually think it’s the Vietnamese black in Colonille that elevates it to awesome heights. So rich and with a lot of depth, and even cocoa hints. Here, the black tea doesn’t really serve any purpose except as a backdrop for the vanilla.

As this cooled, I liked this a bit less. A too-sweet aftertaste comes with every sip, almost syrupy. This flavor began to completely overtake the entire taste of the tea, until all I was tasting was vanilla syrup and no tea. It’s not the most pleasant flavor, either. It feels too heavy for the type of light tea that this is. It’s a weird type of flavor that I can’t wrap my head around, but it’s lingering for a bit too long to be welcome.

I definitely would not have been so nit-picky about this one had I not tried something better, but the truth of the matter is that better vanilla tea does exist. Colonille is all I could even want in a vanilla tea. This one is definitely better hotter than cool.