Dinosara shared this one with me, and it’s a blind steeping in the sense that I made it first and looked it up to see what was in it after. I’m living dangerously, me! Turns out it was a vanilla flavoured black. You know, I have a suspicion that the lovely Dinosara has been paying attention to my quest for the perfect vanilla black… I must say I whole heartedly approve of this. (It’s such a nommy quest too, because all the ones I’ve been trying have been really good, but just not quite there yet.)
It smells very sweet and vanilla-y. Almost ever so slightly too sweet, but not quite into cloying territory yet. It’s just right on the border of being a bit much. Additionally there is a note of something kind of honey-y and nutty or perhaps more sort of fudge-y or caramel-y. That all sounds very awesome, but somehow it’s just not quite my perfect vanilla black perfect aroma. It lacks a bit of roughness. A bit of that leather-y pod-feeling to it. This all smells too sweet and adorable, and I want my vanilla black to be a bit more of a villain, really.
The flavour is strongly vanilla, but not the honey-y sweet fudge-y flavour from the aroma. This is more in the way of the perfect vanilla black, although still not quite there yet. It has that bit of roughness to it, and it is one of those that taste like tea primarily and the flavouring secondarily and not the other way around. It just doesn’t have that pseudo-coconut-y not that I like in a vanilla black. If it had that, we would be well on our way towards perfection, but I have come to realise that this note is bloody hard to find.

It’s true, I sent you any vanilla teas I had that you probably hadn’t tried because of your quest. :) It does seem like that coconut note is the hard one to get in a vanilla