Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where To Buy: The Persimmon Tree
Tea Description:
Whether you fancy hot or cold with a spoonful of honey or rock sugar, this French Vanilla Bean creamy tea is great either way. This tea offers an impeccably smooth blend of organic black loose-leaf tea and sweet vanilla bean flavor.
Learn more about this blend here.
Taster’s Review:
Mmm! I was excited to try this French Vanilla Bean Black Tea from The Persimmon Tree. I really love vanilla teas – the sweet, creamy notes of the vanilla meld beautifully with the camellia sinensis, and I find this to be particularly true with a black tea such as this one.
The black tea base is a robust and full-flavored black tea. It has some malty notes and a rich, earthy taste. The natural, caramel-y sweetness of the black tea together with the creamy sweetness of the vanilla is really yummy. It’s a very luxurious and cozy kind of flavor.
The tea has some dry, tingly astringency. I’d classify it as a medium astringency.
There are some almond slivers and coconut shreds in the blend, and I’m not sure if these ingredients are present to offer more visual interest to the dry leaf or if they’re there to provide additional flavor to the cup, but, I really don’t taste a lot of almond or coconut in this blend. If I slurp the cup to aerate it, I find that these flavors reveal themselves slightly, but neither the almond nor the coconut are really profound flavors to this blend.
And really, with a name like French Vanilla Bean – one really shouldn’t expect anything but a really rich vanilla flavor with a strong, flavorful black tea base, and that’s exactly what this tea delivers.
I’ve brewed this tea twice now, the first time I brewed it, I think I may have either added too much leaf ~or~ I steeped it a tad too long, because I found that it was not only astringent but a wee bit bitter. The second time I brewed it, I was careful to steep it for only 2 1/2 minutes and keep the leaf at just 1 heaping teaspoon, and this second cup was much better. Some teas are a little more persnickety than others, and this is one of those teas that it’s important to pay attention to the details to get the most out of your cup. And once you taste this tea – brewed properly – you realize it’s really worth the little bit more effort.
It’s a good one!
