From my flavoured black Adagio sampler comes…vanilla tea! Now I’m a huge vanilla fan, and this is my first “straight vanilla” tea, so this was one that I was most excited to try.
I’ve made this several times now (very behind on logging my tasting notes), and I followed the steeping parameters on the tin each time to very tasty results. Thankfully it seems quite forgiving of over-steeping and only once did it turn out icky-bitter (which was overcome with some milk and sugar).
The dry leaves have a pleasant tea-vanilla scent that is quite natural (more vanilla bean then super-sweet vanilla dessert). The liquor continued with the vanilla scent just milder then the dry leaves. I tried it first straight and found it drinkable with very little bitterness, but also not much vanilla flavour. I find vanilla is one of those full flavours, it should have some heft and substance you know? Straight this tea had a pleasant black tea flavour and a hint of vanilla-bean taste/scent but without the sweet-richness I think vanilla should have.
I added some milk (really want to try it with cream!), and about half a spoon of of sugar and found this really brought out and filled out the vanilla flavour nicely. This would make a nice dessert tea with some cream or flavoured creamer and I definitely want to try it combined with some of my fruit teas! Vanilla-strawberry…drool
