HC Andersen Blend

Huge thanks to Courtney for sending me a sample of this! I absolutely love it. This blend reminds me, favorably, of Alice’s Tea Cup Alice’s Tea. That blend is black tea, green tea, vanilla, and rose petals, and one of my all-time favorites. The differentiator here is the bergamot. While I’m not generally a big fan of Earl Grey, I don’t mind the bergamot here because it’s noticeable but not a prima donna. Rather, it’s a team player that shares the stage with the vanilla and rose, for an overall well-balanced cup. Halfway through I added about half a teaspoon of sugar just to really give the flavors some extra oomph, but this is a very solid cuppa without sweetener too. I believe this is my first tea from Østerlandsk and it’s a favorable first impression!

It’s my 8 year anniversary on Steepster!

I really had a craving for this tasty tea from VariaTEA. It’s just perfectly comforting today and I want to drink every last bit that was sent my way.

another “Meh” for me in terms of teas. I don’t think i have good luck with this blend BUT in alll fairness this is a blergamot tea.

It’s not strong with it’s blergi-ness which is nice…but the black/green blend annoys me to no end AND there’s nothing else going on with this blend to make it worth anyone’s time. lol at least in my opinion haha

Iced Latte Sipdown (198)

I haven’t been drinking much tea but a couple nights back I got inspired to attempt to make vanilla sweet cream (which can be used to make cold foam). I ordered French Vanilla syrup and it arrived this weekend so I made some up.

I made the first latte yesterday using Hummingbird by AQ2T. Funnily enough I asked Roswell Strange what I should do with my concoction before making the latte and her suggestions were an Earl Grey or Bananas. Without actually seeing this, I made it with a banana tea yesterday. I debated an Earl Grey but wasn’t interested in that flavour profile. I laughed when I realized we had the same idea though.

Anyways, today I thought the Earl Grey would be fun and as one of my oldest teas, I thought it would be a good call to finish this off. Plus I tend to enjoy this as an iced latte anyways and thought the French vanilla in the cold foam would compliment the rose in this tea nicely. I was right since drinking this was delightful. It was like an affogato almost since the cold foam has a thicker/creamy consistency with a classic vanilla custard/ice cream profile thanks to the French vanilla flavouring. That combined with the soft notes of bergamot and rose made for such a lovely drink. A wonderful way to see this off.

I think I will get other flavoured syrups for further experimentation. So many options…

From Sunday afternoon – can’t remember if this is one of the European teas from VariaTEA that I’ve had yet or not, but I enjoyed this cup. More than many of the other European samples she shared, if I’m being totally honest.

Probably because it’s a very intense floral, sweet rose flavour – combined with that hint of vanilla, it reminded me a lot of rosewater Turkish Delight actually. Back when I was living in Saskatoon, there was a gourmet candy store in one of the two malls that also randomly had a Turkish delight “bar” as well with over thirty flavours – there were some damn good ones, but the traditional rosewater was always my favourite & also the best Turkish delight I’ve ever had. This tea made me hella nostalgic for that…