SaChasi – Watermelon Panna Cotta
SaChasi’s Watermelon Panna Cotta tea promises the experience of “golden sugar glaze, strawberries and fresh watermelon layered on a bed of silky soft cream”. And well, I’m not sure it actually delivers on any of that. It’s a fine tea, don’t get me wrong. It’s not just very Panna-Cotta-y.
This is the first oolong I’ve tried from SaChasi. All the previous dessert-trolley-based blends I’ve tried from them have been either black tea or rooibos based. And as an oolong, it is very fine indeed. The Tie Guan Yin Leaf Clusters unfurl pleasingly and provide a delightfully flavoursome brew. And, of course, there is some other stuff in there too.
The last time I had an oolong with extra fruity business was Bird & Blend’s Pink Prosecco tea, where the added rosehip, apple, and raspberry swamped the oolong entirely and made me very cross.
I didn’t have this problem with Watermelon Panna Cotta tea. Oolong is decidedly the leading player here. The blend also contains freeze-dried strawberry pieces, lucuma powder, cornflower petals, and natural flavouring. There are, you’ll have noticed, no actual bits of watermelon in Watermelon Panna Cotta. The strawberries put in a friendly appearance, though and complement the oolong quite pleasingly.
Being an oolong, this tea is amenable to a bit of resteeping. The Tie Guan Yin leaves develop new and exciting flavour profiles after multiple infusions. This isn’t the case with the strawberries, though. You’re pretty much going to get everything you’re going to out of a freeze-dried strawberry chunk on the first steep.
I usually get terribly excited about SaChasi teas, and I feel like I’ve been a bit lacklustre about Watermelon Panna Cotta in this review. I did enjoy it, but not in the way I was expecting to enjoy it.
This teamonger is an expert at blending dessert-inspired tea recipes and giving the tea drinker a full-on indulgent pudding-y experience in a teacup. Watermelon Panna Cotta was basically a strawberry-accented oolong. Which was lovely, but, you know, it was named after a rich, smooth Italian cream confection, and I was expecting something that tasted a bit more decadently sinful.
Today’s featured book is The Red and The Green by Iris Murdoch. (It’s a story about the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin. The red and green of the book’s title refer to the colours of England and Ireland, respectively. I just wanted to make it clear that despite watermelons also being red and green, this book has nothing to do with watermelons.)
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