Peach & Thyme

From the queue

MissB shared a sample of this one with me, and for those who don’t speak French (I don’t; I looked it up), the name is ‘peach and thyme’. Thyme! I’ve never had a tea that had thyme in it before, but I like using thyme in cooking so this is very exciting. I did actually see a different tea recently which had raspberry and thyme which I found somewhat interesting, but wasn’t brave (or rich! Exorbitant price!) enough to purchase. If this one is a success, I may go back to that shop and get some. Is thyme the new fashion ingredient?

The dry leaf smells… peculiar, but lovely. Herb-y fruit? Fruit-y herbs? It’s not really fully recognisable as thyme or as peach, but something in between which smells thouroughly weird. Weird, but lovely. I’ve been sniffing at the bag for several minutes now.

After steeping, the thyme is quite easily recognised in the aroma. It rather reminds me of spaghetti sauce to the point where I caught myself attempting to detect tomato. I couldn’t, for obvious reasons. The peach, however, appears to have gone into hiding. Perhaps it’s shy. I can tell that there’s something else in there, but it’s not really coming out to play. I can’t really tell anything about the base tea at all, though.

The flavour is quite the opposite of the aroma. Where it smells a lot like thyme and not so much like fruit, it tastes a lot like peach and less like thyme. The first sip gave me a ‘yeah, this is peach tea alright’ sort of experience. It has rather clear herb-y overtones, but to my surprise there is actually harmony between the herb and the fruit. I confess I wasn’t entirely convinced that this was possible. The idea of it just seems so bizarre. Like basil ice cream. But it works. It really works.

I’m very pleased with this. It’s a very interesting and pleasant flavour and I’m definitely feeling much more inclined to go and try that raspberry thyme tea I saw now. This is great.