The Republic of Tea – Bridgerton Tea Range
Here we have a whole bunch of teas from The Republic of Tea which were inspired by Netflix’s romance series Bridgerton which was, in turn, inspired by Julia Quinn’s books.
I have Anthony & Kate Spiced Chai, Duke & Duchess Honey Breakfast tea and Queen’s Cake Vanilla Fruit Tea. They all came in a rather spiffy box that says ‘Bridgerton’ on it.
I loved Bridgerton Season 1. I’ve barely made a dent in Season 2 but, so far, it seems to be shaping up to be just as delightful as the first one. Kate looks set to be a wonderfully independent-minded heroine and Anthony – who gets his turn to be the romantic hero this time – is as swoon-worthy as ever he was. Bohemian Benedict is my favourite Bridgerton brother, though, and – let’s face it – neither of them can hold a candle to Simon, Duke of Hastings, who was the epitome of ‘tall, dark and handsome’, and who, sadly, won’t be appearing in this season.
Bridgerton is one of those supposedly guilty pleasures that I refuse to feel in the slightest bit guilty about. It’s fun, it’s frothy and it looks beautiful. I love the way that it concentrates on getting tiny little minutiae of Regency life dead-on, while cheerfully ignoring whopping great anachronisms.
The decision to cast a fabulously diverse set of actors was an inspired one. I don’t care that the ‘Queen Charlotte was actually black’ theory has been roundly disproved by scholars. Bridgerton’s casting choices mean we get Golda Rosheuvel, Adjoa Andoh and Regé-Jean Page all being bloody marvellous and I don’t imagine anyone could have a problem with that.
I love that Netflix chose to film a series of books that are completely and unashamedly straight-by-the-book romantic fiction. (They did fancy it up a bit with subplots in the transition to TV, mind you.) Romance is by far and away the most popular category of genre fiction and it is sorely underrepresented on our television screens. Particularly when you compare it to the less popular book genre of science fiction. There should be more romance on telly! And perhaps, now we’ve got Bridgerton, there will be.
Although this is probably the time to confess that – as a writer of romantic fiction myself – I probably do have a vested interest in the genre. I have written ten romances under the pen name Etta Stark. I don’t talk about them here at TeaFancier.com though because quite frankly, they’re filthy, and I try to keep things vaguely PG around these parts.
So now we’ve established that I love writing, reading and viewing romantic fiction and I love Bridgerton, you will see why I got excited when I discovered that Republic of Tea were selling a range of Bridgerton teas. Republic of Tea are a US-based operation so getting these teas delivered was not an inexpensive undertaking. But I was determined that Bridgerton teas were a thing I needed to have in my life.
There’s just one problem with these teas, which now I come to think of it, is quite a big one. They taste bloody awful.
Anthony & Kate’s Spiced Chai was the best of the bunch. I think this was because it’s harder to mess up Masala Chai. Being stuffed full of spices makes it more forgiving of poor quality tea. Being the best of this particular bunch isn’t much of a recommendation here. I could probably scrape together two stars for this one because it wasn’t actually undrinkable. I could taste the cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, cloves and black pepper. Unfortunately, I couldn’t actually taste the black tea at the base of this brew. I’m sure it was there. I mean, it looked like tea and it brewed up something that was distinctly tea-coloured. But if you’re looking for something where you can appreciate the rich and robust notes of Camellia Sinensis, then Anthony & Kate’s Spiced Chai is not for you.
In fact, if you want something that tastes of tea, the next tea, Duke & Duchess Honey Breakfast Tea is not for you either. This blend contains black tea, sweet blackberry leaves and natural honey, vanilla and orange blossom flavours. All you can taste here is the honey. And not in a good way. Sometimes, like in my recent review for Moc Chau Dragon Breath Oolong, a single-source cultivar can be described as having a ‘honey’ flavour. This is not like that. This tea tastes like Lockets Honey & Lemon cough sweets. You could, I suppose, give it to someone who was ill. But only if you didn’t like them and you wanted them to make them even more miserable.
The last tea in the set is Queen’s Cake Vanilla Fruit Tea. This blend contains green rooibos. I’ve never had green rooibos before and if I were to base my opinion of it on this blend then I would conclude that it doesn’t taste of anything. But – given that The Republic of Tea appear to struggle sourcing black teas that taste of tea – I am going to go out on a limb here and suggest that this may not be the best example of green rooibos out there. Queen’s Cake contains – in addition to rooibos – orange peel, liquorice plus vanilla, blackcurrant, lemongrass and lemon flavours. The liquorice does its best to liquorice everything up but, weirdly, it doesn’t succeed in being the dominant flavour here. What this tea mostly tastes of is ‘sickly sweet’. I am not sure where it comes from – sugar is not listed in the ingredients – but they’ve managed it somehow. Like its Bridgerton brew brethren, I won’t be having this one again.
So there you have it. I was very excited about these teas but they turned out to be hugely disappointing. I should have known really. I’ve learnt before that fancy tea tins are not a reliable indicator of nice (or even drinkable) tea. Apparently buying novelty TV show-inspired teas is as sensible a course of action as buying tea in museum gift shops because the tins are pretty.
At least I still have the rest of Bridgerton Season 2 to look forward to. I haven’t decided what tea I’ll make before I settle down to watch the next episode. But I do know it will be literally anything other than these three.
Lady Whistledown would be most disapproving.
Today’s featured books are The Duke & I and The Viscount Who Loved Me by Julia Quinn. And also, The Second Lady Wilding by Etta Stark. You know, someone really ought to turn that that last one into a Netflix series.
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I love tea and Bridgeton my perfect time to myself
Oohh lovely 😍 👌