Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: Butiki Teas
Tea Description:
Our Potato Pancakes & Applesauce tea pairs our buttery Organic Huangshan Mao Feng with generous potato pieces and crisp apple chips. Plain, this tea is thick with potato notes up front followed by apple and cinnamon notes with some buttery notes that peak through at the end. As the tea is repeatedly sipped the buttery quality will become more apparent. The weighty body adds to both the potato and applesauce feel. Since this tea is on the lighter side, we recommend drinking this tea at a warmer temperature. For stronger potato notes we recommend adding a very small amount of salt; however, this may diminish the applesauce notes. For a sweeter applesauce, we recommend adding a tiny bit of sugar; however, this may reduce the potato notes.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
Wow! This Potato Pancakes & Applesauce Green Tea from Butiki Teas (part of their holiday series in observation of Hanukkah) has to be one of the most unique tasting teas I’ve yet to encounter! I figured it would be when I requested a sample of it with my order, however, I still find myself in AWE of how truly unusual this tea is. Unusual, yes. Unique, certainly. But it’s also really good!
I can’t say that I’ve ever tasted the combination of potato pancakes and applesauce before. I’ve had these two foods separately, but never together. Until now, that is, as I sip this tea. And I really can taste both the potato and the apple in this. Yes, that’s weird, but it’s weird in the yummiest way imaginable.
The green tea base is light and smooth. I note no bitterness or astringency here. Just a crisp taste. It doesn’t even taste overly vegetative or grassy. Really, the strongest “vegetable” note that I taste here is that of the potato, and that tastes somewhat thick and starchy. It’s not a heavy flavor though. I suppose if I wanted the potato to taste stronger, I could have added a pinch of salt like the above description suggests, however, I didn’t want to obscure the apple notes so I decided to go without salt or sweetener here and just experience this tea without additions.
There is a buttery creaminess to this as well, and this melds beautifully with the potato. The apple is delicate and sweet. The cinnamon accentuates the apple nicely without bombarding the blend with a strong cinnamon presence. The cinnamon is added at just the right amount here, because it doesn’t taste distinctly “cinnamon-y” … instead, it makes the apple taste like applesauce, which is exactly what I think Stacy at Butiki Teas was going for (since the name of the tea is Potato Pancakes & Applesauce).
I love it when I find a tea like this: one that delivers exactly what is promised in the name, even if the name seems a little crazy! And yes, the idea of a green tea that tastes of potato pancake and applesauce does sound a little crazy (maybe even more than a little crazy), but again, that’s a crazy in a very delicious way.
Well done!
