This is one of those teas I’ve always avoided. When I picked it out going by scent, though, I think the hot mess that is Mamma Mia from David’s Tea had infiltrated this bag a little, in spite of being double-bagged itself.
As I now smell the tea, I get far less wacky fruit punch. It’s fairly nondescript, but it’s clear it’s a citrusy black tea, which is one of my least favourite combinations. It makes me think of being carsick. The tea puts me in our old Mercedes, scorching blackhot inside from being parked in the sun for hours. The citrus gives me the lemon-scented wetwipes my mother cleaned me off with after I’d been sick. It makes me sad and vomity and grouchy and achingly sentimental all at once, and to this day, I really can’t deal with lemon-scented things.
Steeped, the tea itself isn’t so bad, but it’s too flat and too subtle and too citrusy and has a pretty boring tea base and is just really not for me.
(ETA: Ugh, as this cools, it starts to smell like an old seatbelt.)
[Sample from the EU Travelling Box, autumn 2013.]
Boiling, 4 min