Bird & Blend -Violet Cream
I’m rounding off this Easter Bank Holiday weekend with another chocolate tea. Today’s review is Bird & Blend’s Violet Cream.
As regular readers will know, I’m a huge fan of flowery tea. Bung some lavender or some rose petals in a tea blend and I’m a happy lady. I believe this is the first violet-themed tea I’ve had and it will come as no surprise to anyone – including myself – that I like this one too.
Violet Cream tea’s ingredients are Sri Lankan black tea, cocoa nibs, mallow flowers and flavouring. The eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed that there are no actual violets in this Violet Cream. I suspect that the mallow flowers are primarily there to imbue the product with dried flower-strewn prettiness rather than serving a functional flavour role, and that the delightful violetiness comes by way of the flavouring.
(And it’s ‘flavouring’ rather than Bird & Blend’s usual “natural flavouring”, I notice. The difference between ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ flavourings is an interesting topic that deserves its own post. (I went into it a bit in my review of Tea India’s Cardamom Chai.) The upshot is that natural flavourings and non-natural flavourings are both chemically identical. It’s simply that the means of obtaining those chemicals that differ.)
As for Bird & Blend’s Violet Cream tea cocoa nib contribution, I would have liked this tea to be a bit more chocolatey. The flower flavour is very strident, which relegates the cocoa to the role of supporting character rather than co-star.
(I’m formulating a half-baked theory that teas containing cocoa husks are more chocolatey than those – like this one – which contain only cocoa nibs. I have no idea whether this is true. I will carry out more chocolate tea-based research and get back to you.)
Despite the subtleness of the chocolate and the artificiality of the violets, I enjoyed this tea. It’s a bright little posy of a tea which, in the midst of Easter-y spring celebrations seems entirely appropriate.
Today’s featured book is Helen Pankhurst’s Deeds Not Words. I chose a suffragette-themed book in honour of Violet Aitken, who was an important figure in the British Suffragette movement. Also, violet was one of the Women’s Suffrage movement’s chosen colours. They were green, white and violet, which share the same initials as “Give Women Votes”.
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