C'est Parfait!

C’est ne pas parfait! I have never liked tea with rosehip or hibiscus. It’s in The Book of Tea for Ladies, so I gave it a try anyway. The dry leaves smelled so acidic that I decided to keep the steep time short. Perhaps because of the insufficient steep time, the resulting liquor was weak-bodied. It was like a diluted tomato soup… with a faint floral undercurrent. It tasted just as weird as it sounds…

This is the second time I’ve tried this tea. The first time was before I joined Steepster and was in no way a success! The first time, I used an artificial sweetner and it brought out the taste of the rose petals to the point where the tea was just about undrinkable. This time, I tasted the tea unsweetener first. I still didn’t like it, but it was better. I added a few drops of liquid vanilla stevia, and decided it would do. It’s not a tea I’ll be reordering. It’s got too much rose for my tastes.

Today I went through my “cupboard” to see what I had at work that I hadn’t logged yet, and settled on this one.

(taken with Splenda)

This tea is a dark gorgeous ruby red. The taste is mostly of the tart hibiscus, so I do have to be in the right mood for this tea. It’s dark and mysterious and hard to describe the back notes… I’m not sure what rose hips and cassius taste like, so that may be why I’m struggling to seperate the flavors out.

But, overall, when I’m in the right mood for it, it’s a fantastic tea.

From my 2013 Lupicia Happy Bag! I’m still discovering which teas I like and how to describe them, but this one, this one I liked. I’ve learning that I actually like teas with hibiscus in them, so maybe that’s why. For an herbal tea, I enjoyed it, more than I thought because it didn’t particularly have a wonderful smell dry (e.g., just sort of blah). I bet this might be good iced too :)