I don’t technically ‘need’ this tea, particularly not as I’m moving back to Italy tomorrow morning and plan on bringing every single leaf I own, but hey, I had a discount coupon. (Any excuse is valid when it comes to tea.)
Adding this in translation was a bit more of a challenge than it usually is, seeing as ‘Mareld’, you know that eerie glow of the sea most often encountered (at least by me) in Jules Verne books, closely translates to ‘Milky seas effect’, which makes it sound like the yoghurt is far, far heavier than it is in this one.
Besides, ‘Mareld’ has this wild, poetic nuance to it, suggesting the unpredictability and mystery of nature and the elation and terror of being lost at sea, and… ‘Milky sea’ just doesn’t really do it. I know some people refer to it as sea fire, which is a fairly direct translation from the Swedish, but it doesn’t sound quite right. The scientific term would also work, I guess, but would you really drink a tea called ‘Bioluminescence’?
Well, yeah, of course you would, you tea maniacs. But I (really) digress. Mareel it is, but let me reassure you there are no fishy notes to this whatsoever.
(I think this is another one of those blends from Kahls sold by Tehörnan, as the only place I find any reference to it is on their website.)
In the bag, this is all berry bubblegum. But it’s a natural bubblegum, no matter how contradictory that may seem, and it does has a freshness to it that appeals to me. The scent isn’t very complex, and the simplicity carries through into the cup; this is very much a ‘what you smell is what you get’ tea. This is not as elegant as I would have hoped, and not particularly interesting. In the cup, all that natural bubblegum goes out the window and it gets this vaguely artificial note I can’t quite put my finger on, but that I definitely don’t love. This is my usual problem with berry teas – they’re either too tart or too artificial-tasting.
[Purchased at Tehörnan in Uppsala, September 2013.]
90 C, 1 min 30