Bird & Blend – Hot Cross Bun Tea
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This is the first tea review at TeaFancier.com and I’m sorry I haven’t got a more positive experience to share with you on this, our inaugural step on our tea drinking journey. The thing is, I decided to launch this website on Good Friday, with Bird & Blend’s Hot Cross Bun before I’d actually tried it, or, indeed, read the ingredients list.
If I had appraised myself of the list of ingredients before foolhardily embarking on such an endeavour, I would have (almost literally) read the warning signs. This tea contains Lapsang Souchong, a black tea, whose preparation involves smoking the leaves over pinewood fires and which has a distinctive taste, reminiscent of bonfires. And I don’t mean that in a good way.
Lapsang isn’t even a major player in this particular tea. It is primarily a rooibos and black tea blend with fruit and spices aplenty recreating the seasonal flavour of Hot Cross Buns. But apparently, you don’t need a lot of Lapsang in the mix in order for it to elbow its way in and make its presence known. It’s like sitting next to a smoker in a pub garden.
What it reminds me of more than anything, is when you boil milk in a saucepan over a hob and accidentally burn it, so there’s a layer of dark burnt milk at the bottom of the pan. It doesn’t matter how many other nice things you add to it after that. It’s buggered. The burnt milk, smell and taste will ruin everything, which is what the Lapsang is doing here.
I probably feel the same way about Lapsang Souchong that people who don’t like blue cheese feel about Stilton: “What it’s supposed to taste like that? They did it on purpose?” I’m sure the rooibos, black tea, cinnamon, hibiscus, apple pieces, rosehip, orange peel and cranberries in here are all absolutely lovely, I just couldn’t get over the lapsangsouchonginess.
But hey, maybe you like a bit of smoky tea pepping up your tea blends, in which case I would urge you to check it out. It would, as they say, be a funny old world if we all liked the same things.
* Hot Cross Bunnies, obvs.
I am usually going to photograph my cups of tea next to a book. This is because I like to include items from my house in the pictures and, it turns out, most of the items in my house are books. Today’s book is The Colour Book of Home Baking by Hilary Walden (1978), which, if you’re interested, has a great tried-and-tested milk loaf recipe in it.
Great review Em. I guess that’s one tea I won’t go hunting for! I hope you can wash away the taste with something good.
Hmm, anything LS would put me right off, too… Hope the next one’s more palatable!