Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: The Secret Garden Tea Co.
Tea Description:
Green tea blended with juicy Mango. An exotic complement to a chutney turkey sandwich, vegetable quiche, or other buttery delights.
Ingredients: Green tea, pineapple pieces, mallow petals, natural flavors
Learn more about this blend here.
Taster’s Review:
I have really enjoyed the teas that I’ve tried from The Secret Garden. It makes me wish that I lived in Vancouver, British Columbia instead of Vancouver, Washington so that I could visit their tea room and have high tea with them. I mean seriously, take a look at some of these sweets and savories! YUM!
But since I don’t live in the Vancouver of British Columbia and instead live in the Vancouver of Washington State in the U.S., I must be content with enjoying the lovely teas that they offer and sell online. Like this Mango Green Tea, for example.
To brew it, I put 2 bamboo scoops of tea in the basket of my Breville One-Touch tea maker and added 500ml of freshly filtered water to the jug. Then I set the timer for 2 minutes and the temperature for 175° and I let the tea maker do it’s magic. I came back about five minutes later and a perfectly brewed tea waited for me.
It’s really tasty. There is a really delightful balance between the fruit flavor and the sweet green tea. I taste both of these components and neither seems to be competing with the other for the palate’s attention. They work together quite beautifully.
The green tea looks to me a bit like a Chinese Sencha and it tastes quite a bit like it too. It’s sweet and buttery and smooth. I’m picking up on very little to no astringency. There’s a light vegetal note that melds nicely with the fruit notes.
The mango is sweet and has a flavor that reminds me of fresh mango. It has a very authentic fruit flavor. It doesn’t taste overly sweet or artificial.
The fruit bits in the dry leaf are actually dried pineapple rather than dried mango – which was used, I suspect, because dried mango is a little more difficult to come by than dried pineapple. And since the dried fruit in a tea blend like this really adds very little to the finished flavor, the dried fruit is more for appearance sake than for taste.
And the proof of that is in the taste. I have attempted to taste pineapple in this and every once in a while I pick up on the slightest – ever so slight! – note of pineapple’s tart. I can’t even be sure if it’s something I’m actually tasting or if it’s in my head because I’m trying to see if I can taste it. Really, what I’m tasting is mango.
Delicious mango!
