Sacher Blend - TE22

A review of Scented Darjeeling Tea (Sacher Blend Tea TE22S) by Upton Tea Imports
Steeping suggestion:
I placed 2 ¼ g/cup of the leaves into a cup and pour the boiling water in the cup and left to steep for four minutes.
This tea brews dark amber in color; I would have to say reddish amber and has a somewhat malt-fruity aroma.

I let it cool for a bit and simply take in the teas’ odor.

With first sipping and as I continue to drink the tea I find that I like that it’s soft on the palette; there is slight fruitiness to it, some citrus notes from the Bergamot oil I am supposing. This Sacher blend is to have some hint of vanilla added to it. So I suspect that is why the bergamot is not so prevalent as I have had in other teas with extra-berrgamot.

Something of this tea is similar to the Kopili Assam black tea. It has that same smoothness and creaminess and I could even say an overall caramel like taste to it.

I like this tea and it would make good iced tea as well. It is full-bodied tea, possessing quite a heft and the overall note is that it is smooth with a sweet malt flavor.

This tastes like a softly flavored, slightly creamy earl grey. Not bitter and slightly astringent. Everything about this tea is light. This is so much better than the earl grey stocked where I work. And it doesn’t have the off aftertaste of some cream earl greys I’ve tried. I like this one.

Been doing Upton Imports sampler thunderdomes, two teas at a time, sometimes with comparison obvious (same flush or estate darjeelings, say), sometimes less so, like here where I compared Upton TE22, Sacher Blend (scented darjeeling) with Upton TB84, Robert Fortune Blend (darjeeling and yunnan).

Pleasant floral darjeeling-y fresh-perfume scent dry. Both smell really good fresh in the cup. Brewed, a nice medium red brown.

Quite tannic/astringent. The floral fragrance is lovely, but I associate it with all nice darjeelings I’ve had, don’t notice that it’s especially extra oomphy with vanilla or bergamot here, just the slightest tinge. Kind of woody somehow both in flavor and texture. Not wet forest but dry timber wood graininess, kind of like licking a wooden block or wood chips, ha. That sounds bad maybe but oddly enough it isn’t unpleasant here, at least I don’t find it so; in fact, the more I drink it the more this weird raspy wood flavor thing grows on me. And it stands up to milk and sugar, which is good as that softens but doesn’t completely remove the astringency I tend to avoid in everyday teas.

The odd woodiness makes me think I’d restock this at some point just to experience something I haven’t elsewhere, but it’s not going to ever be a regular rotation thing.

This tea is rather strange. A decent but not spectacular Darjeeling lightly scented with bergamot flavouring and vanilla. This unusual pairing ends up like a faint version of the strange taste of orchid tea, a little reminiscent of powdered coffee creamer or dry meringue cookies. With a touch of milk, the aftertaste instead reminds me of white chocolate. The tea is overall mild without complicated flavor notes or progression; something I would rather gulp than sip and contemplate. It does a good job of warming me up. However, I am not a fan of this flavour profile, so I will not be ordering any more once I run out. That said, while it does not impress me, Sacher Blend is certainly not “bad”, and I won’t have any trouble finishing my current batch.

One of many samples I recently purchased from Upton. Its mostly whole leaf, with some broken pieces- and the aroma- what is that? sweet gherkin pickle juice? Bizarre….

Three minutes of steeping got very little flavor out of this, four got a bit more, so I went with 5. At bit better at that point but really just a meh sort of tea. I don’t get much darjeeling from it, and I don’t get much Earl Grey either.

Mostly this comes off as a weak earl grey, and if I wanted that, there are plenty of those to choose from .

Sorry Upton, this just isn’t worth drinking….

I ordered this tea because I have been to tea at the Sacher hotel in Vienna. While that was a wonderful trip, I don’t have any particular memories of what the tea itself was like. This is perhaps a bad sign, no? The description mentioned bergmot, and I love Earl Grey, so I went for it!

This is a delicate tea. The bergmot whispers rather than shouts, and I could not detect the vanilla in any form. As it turns out, I would prefer the bergmot to shout at me, so I found this blend rather bland. I brewed at just under boiling for 4 minutes. Halfway through my cup I got bored and added some milk. I would not recommend doing that, because what was an insignificant taste before totally bows down to the milk, and you end up with a cup of lightly scented milk!

I didn’t finish my cup, and I doubt I will finish the sample either. It’s not a bad tea, just not to my personal taste. If you don’t think of it as Earl grey you may have better luck than I did!

This actually does taste very similar to the tea blend used at the Sacher hotel. It is a wonderful Darjeeling blend with some Ceylon and a bit of bergamot. If you like a very mild Earl Grey, this would be a good fit as well.

The smell of the vanilla is definitely there when dry but once it’s brewed most of that is gone. I didn’t get the bergamont at all. It’s a smooth, non-offensive drink but it doesn’t really have enough of anything setting it apart to make it worth a repeat purchase.

This one makes a really damn good London Fog, The Vanilla and Bergamot in this one is quite gentle but the flavor is quite nice. I don’t think of it as a Darjeeling but as an Earl Grey version, I usually like earl grey with really strong Bergamot but I appreciate the subtle bergamot in this one, its lovely.
I like it :)

The leaves smell soooo vanilla with sweet bergamot… reminds me a lot of Paris from Harney. But when steeped, there isn’t much vanilla or bergamot. It is however, massively Darjeeling. Deeply muscatel with stone fruits and some grassyness. I got zero astringency as well. I quite like this one, even if it wasn’t quite what I was expecting.