Tea Information:
Leaf Type: White
Where to Buy: 52Teas
Tea Description:
We’ve had a few cheesecake blends over the years, and I’ve heard from a number of customers that the cheesecake is a bit on the subtle side. So I’ve decided to try a cheesecake blend with a lighter tea that might not normally be a good match for cheesecake flavors. (I tend to want to pair our white teas with sweet, fruity notes.) So here is our delicious shou mei white tea, blended with real freeze-dried apricot bits and natural apricot and cheesecake flavors. And it is truly delicious!
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
One thing you can pretty much count on is when 52Teas creates a cheesecake flavor for its Tea of The Week, that cheesecake flavored tea is going to sell out pretty quickly. Frank – the chief Zoomdweebie at 52Teas – is the master of cheesecake flavored tea!
But I have to be honest, this isn’t my favorite cheesecake blend that Frank has ever come up with. That said, this is still a really tasty blend!
While hot, the flavors tend to be a bit more jumbled – I can taste notes that are apricot-like and cream cheese-ish. There are some buttery and brown sugary notes in there too. But there is nothing really about it – when it’s served hot – that screams out to me and says “I am Apricot Cheesecake!”
But as the tea cools, the flavors become more distinctive. The apricot becomes much more like apricot – sweet and juicy and it tastes remarkably like the apricot filling that my gramma would make when she’d make apricot cobbler. Sweet, even a little extra sweetness from the glazing, but still true to the fruit. Then there are the flavors that are associated with the cheesecake. Creamy, tangy cream cheese. Buttery pastry with a hint of brown sugar. YUM!
And as I’ve mentioned before, the tea is at least just as important – if not more important – as the flavors. After all, I’m drinking tea, not some soda fountain concoction. I want to taste the tea. And I do taste the Shou Mei. It has a sweet, lightly nutty flavor that melds beautifully with the pastry crust notes of the flavoring, making it taste more – I think – like pastry. And the creaminess of the Shou Mei lends itself well, and even enhances, the creamy elements of the cheesecake flavor.
So, while this isn’t my favorite cheesecake blend from Frank, it is certainly delicious. And trust me when I say that it’s worth checking out 52Teas website and subscribing to the newsletter to stay “in the know” for when his famous cheesecake flavored teas are offered … you’ve got to try at least one! But be warned … once you try one, you’re going to want MORE!
