So I promised another tea review, and given that I’ve had about half of the box so far, I think it’s fair that I start.
After I posted my last review, a few people--mostly relatives--made a great deal of fun of me for such a geeky focus on a cup of tea. And having said that, I took the opportunity to look a little more thoroughly at the tea blogging community.
Wow, there was a fully developed niche that I have no exposure to. I’ve been on this “internet thing” for so long that I still think of fully deployed niche blogs as being sort of “new,” which I think explains some of my awed response.
In any case, I’m not that much of a tea dweeb, most of the teas that I’m reviewing come in bag form, and I’m not experimenting to find the proper brewing nirvana for each tea variety, I’m just drinking the tea as I normally would and seeing how it goes.
The tea this time is Pickwick English Tea Blend. It’s a dutch tea, or at least the packaging is all dutch. The tea-bags are pretty big it seems, and there is no individual wrapping, though the bags all have strings and grip-tab things. This packaging is sort of annoying, it’s sort of “half way there,” and makes it difficult to use effectively.
The tea is pretty strong, I think this is a function of the bags being bigger: I get a really strong 16-18oz cup of tea from one bag, which is a function of bag size, I think. It almost always needs milk, but it’s not a harsh tea, despite it’s strength.
In term of flavor, it’s interesting deep, rich, which is delightful of course, but there’s a hint of something wooden or smokey--a little bitter behind the flavor, which is a good move. I think tea needs something back there to make it unique and to differentiate it from other teas.
If I weren’t looking to switch to loose leaf teas, for most of my day-to-day tea drinking, I’d probably get this one again in a heart beat. Since the packaging sucks, and I’m looking to use the loose stuff, maybe not so much. But if you really like strong dark tea, without any flavor crap this is really great stuff.