A Tale Of Two Teas – Fairytale Collection – Part 1
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My favourite book-inspired brew blender, A Tale of Two Teas, has brought out a new range of literary teas. Their Fairytale Collection promises the heady flavours of princes, princesses, frogs, pumpkins and shoes made out of dangerously breakable materials.
I bought the whole set of five teas because apparently I’m a completist. I like how A Tale of Two Teas have covered all the tea and “tea” bases. There’s a black tea, a green tea, a white tea, a rooibos and a fruity herbal tisane effort.
In order to break the reviews up into manageable chunks, I’m reviewing three of them today, and will cover the remaining two tomorrow.
First up is Spinning Wheel, a Sleeping Beauty-inspired tea containing rooibos, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, orange and vanilla. This tea is an absolute treat. The rich toasty rooibos welcomes the spices and citrus with open arms and makes for a warm, chai-like cup of rooibossy pleasure.
I’m pleased that A Tale of Two Teas didn’t go down the obvious route of making their Sleeping Beauty tea a chamomile and lavender sleepytime affair. Presumably, because what with the cursed spinning wheel and everything, the princess really didn’t need any help nodding off.
I guess another interpretation of a Sleeping Beauty-themed tea would have been a strong English Breakfast. I know if I were to wake up after a hundred years’ snooze, I’d be reaching for something with some serious caffeine.
I had high hopes for this Rapunzel-based fruit tea, comprising of hibiscus, mallow flowers, rosehips, apple and strawberry. I am not, as you know, a fan of fruity tisanes as a rule. I have, so far, only encountered one fruit infusion that I liked well enough to give a high star rating to. That tea was Artful Dodger, which is produced by this here tea blender. Having done it once, I was keen to find out if A Tale of Two Teas could replicate the success of putting together a non-tea that I actually found a pleasure to drink.
Fair Maiden promises the taste of strawberries and cream. Sniffing the fruit in its dried form delivers the impression of rich summery fruits with a heavy waft of vanilla. Sadly, once I’d stopped sniffing it and moved on to steeping the stuff in boiling water, I had a fairly bog standard fruit tea, where all I could really taste was the rosehips.
This is my favourite of the collection so far. Glass Slipper is an Earl Grey-esque affair with black tea, bergamot, vanilla, orange and blue cornflower petals. (I suspect that the presence of cornflowers in tea blends is just for the look of the thing. I’m not sure what they bring to the party flavour-wise.)
This creamy, fruity black tea is an absolute corker. I love Earl Grey, and this is a super deluxe Earl Grey with all the extras. The black tea base is pretty fine too. They’re not just a novelty act, these teamongers, they really do know how to produce a damn good tea blend. I would happily give Glass Slipper a regular space on my tea shelf.
Presumably, Cinderella would have only been able to enjoy such excellent tea once she’d (spoiler!) married the prince and was living the royal high life. In her Oppressed-By-Evil-Stepmother years, she probably had to fashion some kind of tea alternative out of ash and mouse droppings.
Stay tuned for reviews of the remaining teas in the collection, Frog Prince and Enchanted Forest, tomorrow.
Today’s books are the Ladybird Well-loved Tales versions of Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel and Cinderella. Well, they’re not the actual books because while I would love to have copies of all the proper 1960s and 1970s Ladybird classic fairy tales in my library, I’m not there yet. Although I do own a couple, as you’ll see tomorrow. Pictured here are reproductions from ‘Postcards from Ladybird‘, a nostalgia-tastic collection of front covers in postcard form.
