Tea Information:
Leaf Type: White
Where to Buy: 52Teas
Tea Description:
So, I’m a little extra excited about our new freeze-dried grapes. I can’t help it, they are just too much fun to blend with. I’m hoping our customers will forgive me and enjoy this deliciousness.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
Grape is not my favorite flavor. I like the fruit alright when eaten fresh (and I like to freeze grapes and eat them like that), but when it comes to grape flavored foods, I tend to steer clear of them. I don’t like grape candy or gum or soda or ice pops. I don’t even really like grape juice, jelly or jam. So, when 52Teas announced this tea as their tea of the week for the week of May 7, 2012, I was less than overjoyed. In fact, it would be more accurate to say I was a wee bit disappointed.
But that was before I tried it.
And as I sit here, sipping this Concord Grape Bai Mu Dan, I’m quite enjoying it, despite the fact that I usually don’t care for grape flavored drinks. This is actually quite good!
The flavor is sweet, but there is enough tartness to the grape flavor to keep it from tasting like the icky-grape-ness that I dislike so much in the soda and other grape flavored foods. This tastes a bit more like grape juice to me, but the delicious, light Bai Mu Dan offers a balance so that I’m not drinking that sickeningly thick, sweet-tart juice.
What I’m trying to say here is that the Bai Mu Dan saves this tea from being something that I’d probably otherwise dislike, and turned it into something that I’m actually enjoying. And the flavor gets better as it cools, which means this will be my next pitcher of iced tea!
There are those (I’ll call them “purists”) who think that the reason tea artists flavor teas is because the teas aren’t of good enough quality to enjoy on their own… so the teas are “masked” by the flavors to make them consumable. I don’t really agree with this viewpoint, as I have found many tea artists (like Frank at 52Teas) who use very high quality teas in their flavored teas. But, if it were the case, I’d have to argue that with this particular tea, I think that the opposite is closer to the truth. The tea actually makes the Concord Grape drinkable!
