Black Tea Merlot

I had 3 cups of this so far today. I wanted to drink a bit last night of actual WINE or BEER or SOMETHING because it was a doo-zee of a day but I didn’t, so, I started today with this one…and LOTS of it! LOL :)

This was in my December AMODA Tea box and it pretty much made me delightfully happy because I’ve been wanting to try these out but there’s a hefty price to them that just hasn’t left me inclined to order something that i don’t know if i’ll love. wow that sentence just hurt my head. punctuation much? yeaaaah…

so anyway, first off, this is a really pretty tea. I love the purple flowers in it. And man did this smell like wine! Now i prefer white wine over red, but I have been known to enjoy a good red wine from time to time. This tea smelled exactly like the last little bit that’s always left in the bottle no matter how long you hold it upside down heh.

How does it taste? Like grapes…but with a hint of…spice? hmm not sure if that makes sense.i can taste the currants and the brew is smooth. This tea makes me want to try some of the others to see how they compare. I don’t think i’d drink this everyday but I’d absolutely drink this from time to time.

A very nice and unexpected tea.
I have tried many wine flavored teas but this one somehow rises above the others.
Unlike those other wine flavored teas I have had – this one is not artificially flavored and you sure can taste the difference!
Thank you LiberTEAS for sending me a sample of this!
There is a deep base that is quite excellent, the mixture of the black currant and licorice are perfection and combine to create something quite unique and tasty! Note, I dislike licorice with a passion yet the licorice tastes nothing as you would expect in this masterful blend!
This is my first tea ever from Vintage TeaWorks and I do hope to try more in the near future!
ETA: Only downside to this one is that it did not re-steep very well for me.

Tried once more, just not a fan of this one.

Thanks for the sample, Azzrian! Forgot that before.

I think I am just weird about plum flavors. Though I believe I steeped this for less time today, so I am actually kind of getting black currant too, but the plum and grape is not suitable for my tastes.

Even though it’s 2:41 pm here, it’s still very morning-ish to me, because we were up late and I still feel sluggish. I need black tea!

I don’t know if this will do the trick, but, it’s black tea, and it’s what I had sitting on my tea counter waiting for me to try. So, I grabbed it and am hopeful that it will help bring me to a better state of wakefulness.

The aroma is amazing from the moment I first open the canister. It smells very much like wine. Very grape-y, but with a distinct note of fermentation. Brewed, the tea smells very nice also, like black tea with a hint of fermented grape. Hints of floral seem to dance across the surface as well.

Wow! This is nice. It is certainly “velvety and robust” … it has a lovely black tea base that is strong and deliciously smooth. The merlot flavoring is sweet and has a very intriguing depth of “dark fruits”: grape, currant, and plum. It also has a hint of licorice in this, not a strong flavor (for those of you who do not like licorice, I don’t think that the flavor here would disturb your enjoyment of this tea), instead, it is more like a distant flavor that seems to enhance the overall wine-like experience.

Very enjoyable, indeed, and I do feel a bit more alert than I did when I started this tasting note!

Sil Sample Sipdown
I’ve been hanging on to the last bit of this for awhile, & today was the day. This is my after breakfast tea, kind of a morning dessert, if you will, & I’m enjoying it, to be sure.

The dry leaf is lovely, with little flowers & kind of a purple-red cast to the leaf. Steeped, it is a nice fruity tasting blend. I’ve never drank Merlot, so I have no idea what it tastes like, but this makes for a tasty cup.

This is the first tea I’ve tried from Vintage TeaWorks, & if it is representative of their other teas, I hope to give them a try someday too. Thanks Sil :)

Now I’ve never been a huge red wine fan. My tastes run to the sweeter side of things. So I wasn’t super sure how I would feel about this one. But I got up very late this morning (after being out super late last night). I figured this would be a bit of a hair of the dog after all the wines last night. I was correct.

My first reaction after opening the container this tea arrived in was holy grapes! Yet I saw no grapes. What I did see were beautiful blue malva petals and some lovely black tea. So I set the kettle and waited and enjoyed the grape smell as I waited. This scent amplified as I poured the water over the leaves. It really began to smell like Merlot! While I let it steep I tossed a chocolate muffin top in the toaster oven because a) I was hungry and b) hello red wine + chocolate tends to = awesome. I was not mistaken!

This tea was smooth, yet slightly tart and full of flavor. I must admit the currant and licorice (not a licorice fan usually) played very well together. Everything worked well together…so well that my muffin top is gone and I need a refill on my tea!

This is probably my favorite Vintage Teaworks tea. Nice and smooth, a hint of licorice, and just slightly sweet.

Thanks beelicious for this lovely sample. I’ve been holding off on trying it for a while—it seems too strong to drink late in the day, but too fruity for a breakfast tea (and besides, I’m usually not awake enough to fully appreciate my first cup of the day). Today I was finally able to try it in the early afternoon, so hooray!

The blend has a rich, dark-berries aroma that does immediately remind me of a full-bodied, fruity red wine. The part about Merlot getting a bad rap in the official description makes me laugh—having lived in wine country for many years, this is true to some extent, but it doesn’t stop us from enjoying it!

The taste of this tea is similarly richly fruity, not quite wine-like but definitely wine-inspired. The flavors are “tannic” as suggested by the description, making me think of blackcurrants and grape skins. There’s also an interesting sweetness that is candy-like, but refreshing instead of cloying. I finally identified it as liquorice, and while it’s not a common ingredient in tea blends, it has a nice effect here, making the tea seem less heavy as a reuslt. Overall, it’s a one-of-a-kind and enjoyable blend!

This sample came from Blodeuyn. She was kind enough to send me samples of three different teas from this company, which I’ve been curious about since I stumbled upon their website a couple of months ago. The leaves are very small and dark, and there are several colors of flower petal/buds mixed in with them. Dry, this tea smells very sweet and almost candy-like with grape and plum notes. It also has a weird powdered sugar scent to it that I do not enjoy. I steeped a teaspoon of leaf for 4 minutes at 200 degrees.

The brewed aroma is also sweet and fruity with some malt and definite wine-y characteristics. However, it still has that weird powdered sugar/chalky scent. Meh, that scent carries over into the taste as well, which is too bad. It reminds me of those berry-flavored Tums. The other flavors are quite nice here, the winey grape and the plum along with a touch of licorice and floral. I would enjoy this one a lot if it weren’t for the weird chalky flavor…