Teavivre has kindly sent me some new teas to sample, and I thought one of the packets had an odd shape to it, so I checked it out and inside found this!
As you can probably guess from the title of this post and from the picture of the ball of tea above, this Rose Dragon Ball Black Tea includes black tea and roses. Remember how artisan floral teas were all the rage a few years ago? I'd forgotten about them, so it was lovely to open this ball of tea leaves and discover the pretty rosebuds drifting off as the tea steeped in my glass teapot.
The taste, however, is what impressed me most about this tea. I was expecting a heavy perfumed taste because of the rose, but I found only the merest hint of rose in this tea. Mostly I tasted a very fresh, very brisk (but not astringent) Yunnan tea with its characteristic malty notes. According to Teavivre, the Rose Dragon Ball Black Tea is made from Yunnan large-leaf species of old tea trees. These old tea trees are between 50 and 300 years old. (Tea trees over 300 years old are considered to be "ancient" tea trees.) I greatly enjoyed the taste of this tea from "old tea trees," and I had several cups of it. Since I've sipped lots of flavored teas over the past week, a quality black tea seemed to be just what I was looking for, and I appreciated both the taste experience and the aesthetic experience of this lovely new tea. Go here if you'd like to learn more about Teavivre's Rose Dragon Ball Black Tea.
That certainly is a pretty tea as it brews, and I'm glad to know it tasted good, too.
ReplyDeleteNow this one sounds intriguing~
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