Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Amoda Tea
Tea Description:
There’s a whole lot of tang in this tea: orange peel, lemongrass, bergamot oil. The Ceylon (Sri Lankan) base tea can also have a tangy character. This is a smooth, medium-bodied cup. Obviously, the citrus in this tea is bold, but it’s not aggressive or bergamot-heavy.
Learn more about this tea here.
Learn how to subscribe to Amoda’s Monthly Tea Tasting Box here.
Taster’s Review:
This Citrus Earl Grey Black Tea Blend from Naked Teas Galore is the second of the three teas I received in this month’s Tea Tasting Box from Amoda Tea. I really do enjoy these boxes, and this month, they did things a little different. Instead of providing three different teas/tisanes from three different tea vendors, they chose just one vendor to focus on, and selected three different teas from them.
I kind of like this change … it gives me the opportunity to try not just one tea from a tea company, but, three! Let’s just hope that the company they choose will be a new-to-me company – like this month’s vendor, Naked Teas Galore.
I am very happy with this particular selection – Citrus Earl Grey. Of course, Bergamot is already a citrus, but Naked Teas Galore really zoomed in on the citrus notes by adding Lemongrass and Orange Peel. These additional citrus flavors soften the sometimes sharp bergamot flavor and create a sort of “medley” of citrus-y flavor … sort of like a citrus punch, if you can imagine that. The bergamot is still distinct, of course, but just … more mellow. Smoother. Sweeter! The orange peel and lemongrass do not offer a strong, specific flavor of their own in the brewed cup; instead, these ingredients contribute to the aforementioned “citrus punch” like taste.
The black tea is sort of a mellow-tasting black tea that sits off in the background, content to let the citrus-y flavors play. It is a solid black tea flavor, but it is definitely off in the background. It is not an aggressive flavor, but I think a stronger black tea flavor would have interrupted the citrus-y notes that I think Naked Teas Galore was trying to hone in on with this blend. It might be interesting to see how a stronger black tea base would have tasted here, but as it it, I find this to be a really tasty tea, perfect for one of those lazy afternoons, when you just want to sit and contemplate the joy of tea!
