Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black & Green Blend
Where to Buy: Murchie’s Tea & Coffee
Product Description:
Murchie’s Library Blend Tea is a mild blend of green & black teas featuring Ceylon, Jasmine, Keemun and Gunpowder teas that is delightfully aromatic with a rich, smooth flavour. Anything but boring, and as great as the classics in literature!
Learn more about this blend here.
Taster’s Review:
Because this Library Blend Tea from Murchie’s Tea & Coffee is a blend of both black and green tea leaves, I brewed the tea at a lower temperature (185°F) and steeped it for just 2 minutes to avoid scorching the tender green tea leaves.
This is an interesting blend. I’m not quite ready to call it “tasty,” but it’s interesting. The black teas – Ceylon and Keemun – brewed at a lower temperature and for a shorter period of time offer a mild black tea flavor and they meld with the green tea flavors. There’s a gentle flinty flavor to this. It’s … smoky … but not quite … if that makes sense. It tastes like the soft wisps of smoke when attempting to light a fire: before the fire becomes a blaze.
The green tea lightens the body and the flavor. There are notes of earth, hints of a grassy taste, and the aforementioned wisps of smoke. There is a light astringency to the cup.
The one thing that is holding me back from really liking this is the jasmine. It just tastes a little off. You know me, jasmine is one of my favorite florals, but, it isn’t working for me in this blend. The floral notes here taste contrived.
Overall, I would say that this blend is just OK. Not spectacular in any way, and I found myself wishing that this would have been made a “simpler” blend by eliminating the jasmine. It’s alright, but not a tea at the top of my list to try again soon.
Blueberry Green Tea from Murchie’s Tea & Coffee
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: Murchie’s Tea & Coffee
Product Description:
The perfect combination of nutrients and flavour in an aromatic green tea.
Taster’s Review:
I love the flavor of blueberry, but it isn’t always easy to find a good tasting blueberry tea. I don’t know why, but more often than not, they either are strongly flavored with an artificial taste, or they are too faintly flavored and the blueberry flavor is practically absent. Occasionally, I’ll encounter a well-balanced, pleasant tasting blueberry tea. This is one such occasion.
This tea is not too heavily flavored, and the green tea base comes through nicely. It is lightly sweet with a delicious nutty tone and a hint of creamy butter taste. There is a vegetative note to this tea as well, but, it is not a strong, bitter grassy taste. It is light and crisp.
The blueberry flavor is, as I indicated before, lightly flavored but not too understated. It is not overdone. The flavor tastes like a real blueberry – juicy and delicious. It doesn’t taste fake.
This experience has given me good cause to take a closer look at Murchie’s intriguing line of teas! There are a few that I’ve added to my shopping list!