Arctic Fire Tea – Kent & Sussex Tea & Coffee Co.

I'm back, and with the weather returning to more normal English summer levels (i.e. a bit chilly, grey and gloomy) I'm drinking tea again. 

Today’s offering is the extremely interesting and very pretty-looking Arctic Fire Tea from the Kent & Sussex Tea & Coffee Co.

Ingredients: china black tea, cornflowers, mango, papaya, peppermint

They describe it thus:

“Arctic Fire is a scented China Black Tea with blue cornflowers. Beautiful flavours of Tropicana Summer Fruits and Peppermint. A powerful aroma when you open the packet! Mint and fruity flavours of Mango and Papaya make this a very refreshing tea for mid-afternoons.”

Despite being a medium caffeine black tea, Arctic Fire has an extremely light taste if you brew it for the recommended 3 minutes. It also has the distinction of being the most unusual tasting tea I have ever tried. This is due to the mixture of peppermint with the fruity flavours of the mango and papaya, which combine to make a strange flavour which I really rather like - as do other reviewers on the website.

Leaving it to brew for longer (yes, I forgot it the second time so it was probably nearer 7-8 minutes) makes the black tea more noticeable but doesn’t otherwise diminish the interesting flavour — and they’re right, the aroma when you open the packet is amazing.

Although I am extremely fond of mint (as my addiction to Extra Strong Mints will attest (much to my dentist’s dismay), mint choc chip ice cream is my favourite by a country mile and I absolutely adore mint milkshakes when I can get them) I’m not the world’s biggest fan of mint tea.

This was after a bad experience in the Rif mountains when I was in my teens during which I was served what was basically hot water with a load of fresh (dirty) mint and a bucket-load of sugar (it was horrendous). This one and only excursion into Moroccan mint tea was enough to make me nervous of trying mint drinks again, particularly when I had a similarly unsatisfying experience with a Mint Julep in New Orleans (that’s a story for a different blog).

However, this mint tea is saved by the addition of the fruit, which is enough to take it to a whole new level. There is still the freshness of the peppermint, coming through but it is tempered by the fruity flavour (sort of like chewing a stick of peppermint and juicy fruit chewing gum at the same time), and this is what makes it so unusual.

Also, unusually for me, and especially with a black tea, Arctic Fire is perfect without sugar — yep, you heard right, no sugar is required, so it’s another one I can feel virtuous about drinking, and I will definitely be drinking more of it.

I'm sure you'll be unsurprised to hear that Kent & Sussex Tea & Coffee Co. are doing one of their weekend specials. This week everything is 10% off and you get a free sample of their Oolong Formosa (which I reviewed a while back). The offer runs until midnight on Sunday with the promotion code OOLONG.