Tupelo Tea

STTB Tea

Strong black base made primarily of a Chinese black tea. Smokey bourban, but none of the vanilla and caramel I was promised by the seller’s description. No sweetness at all.

Samurai Travelling Tea Box – Tea #25

I pulled this from the box in the morning as something that I was curious to try, not realizing I’d be making a bourbon flavoured tea at work. Of course, that’s not super out there and it’s far from the first boozy tea flavour that’s been in our office before – but I was in a TINY meeting room and the aroma coming off the steeping mug was VERY intensely bourbon. I’m sure no one else cared, but I definitely noticed…

That said, the bourbon flavour is excellent and I really enjoyed the mug. I’ve been trying to be super critical of what teas in the box are worth actually keeping for myself but I think this is one of the ones that I want to pull (I think it’ll be the third I’ve kept). It was just so intoxicatingly (haha, puns!) smooth and rdeep. I think I could do a lot of fun stuff with this blend if I don’t just drink it all straight…

Before leaving for our trip, we looked up tea shops near Blue Ridge and found this one right in the middle of downtown. It was frigid and windy today, so by the time we made it to the tea shop we felt like walking icicles. We each picked a tea to try as a latte and warmed up inside the store while we waited. Mine was supposed to be a blend of hazelnut and strawberry, but I think the strawberry flavor may have been lost in the coconut milk they used in my latte. I could taste the hazelnut, though as a whole the tea flavor was weak. I bought a bag of this to bring home with me, so I’ll try it again making it the way I normally would to see if I can bring out some of the flavors.

Side note – When was putting this into Steepster, I noticed another tea with the same name from Adagio and the exact same description, word for word. Maybe Tupelo Tea is an offshoot of Adagio? I did notice they were using Adagio IngenuiTEA steepers while we were there, but didn’t think too much of it.