Tea Information:

Leaf Type:  Black & Green Teas

Where to Buy:  Tea and Other Things

Tea Description:

The first thing you inhale is the rich, smokey scent of a freshly opened new book. This tea starts off full of character with toast like notes, ending with a sweet rich caramel, and finally leaving you with a nostalgic feeling of a good, classic story.

Ingredients
Genmaicha (Japanese Green Tea + Roasted Rice), Hojicha (Roasted Japanese Green Tea), Lapsang Souchong (Chinese black tea that has been smoked over oak), Caramel pieces (Contains sugar + milk products)

Learn more about this tea here.

Taster’s Review:

This tea was so intriguing.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t a tea for me.

This blend has so many uniquely different types of tea going on that I think it actually hurts the blend.  The Lapsang Souchong absolutely dominates the rest of the tea and all you really get is a smoky black tea taste.  The caramel, genmaicha, and hoijcha are lost in the blend.  I do like Lapsang Souchong but this one I just really didn’t care for.  It was an overload of smokiness.

Maybe if the Lapsang Souchong was taken down some, then the rest of the other blends could pop out and shine.  Or maybe if the Lapsang was taken out completely.  Now that would be a tea I would be all about.

The other unfortunate issue with this tea was that this tea and a sample tea were shipped in a regular letter style envelope without any padding or tissue paper to protect the tea.  A lot of the tea was crushed and to even get the tea out of the envelope was hard.  The Fresh Books tea was a 50g package and it was a pretty big package.  The sample tea I think was protected by the 50g package and was completely fine.  I’m not sure if this is why the blend tasted the way it did.  The boyfriend had the sample pack (Cream of Early Grey) and really liked it.

This Etsy store showcases some fun sounding teas including fandom teas.  I may check them out later or even send them a message asking if they can create this same blend without the smokey black tea.  I think that blend would be amazing!