Gentle Pumpkin Fruit Tisane – Kent & Sussex Tea & Coffee Co.

To be honest, I have been so extraordinarily busy with work this last week or so that I haven’t had much time to enjoy tasting new teas. When I’m head-down over the laptop for dozens of hours on end I need lots of tea to keep me going, but it needs to be the stuff I can chug quite happily without thinking about it, and without needing to think about writing a review afterwards. This means that I’ve basically been living on Milk Oolong (of course) from various suppliers (hence no link), Garden of England and this weekend’s favourite, Apricot.

However, I did manage to sneak in one new tea as I’ve had it for quite a while now and really wanted to try it. It’s a fruit tea by Kent & Sussex Tea & CoffeeCo. called Gentle Pumpkin Fruit Tisane.



Ingredients: Pumpkin Pieces, Apple Pieces, Orange Peel, Apple Cubes, Natural Flavouring, Vanilla Pieces, Safflower, Freeze-dried Tangerine-Orange Fruit Pieces.

They describe it thus:

“Pumpkin Tea! Using the sweet citrus notes of apples and oranges together with pumpkin flavours we have created this blend of tea which has lovely fruity Autumnal aromas. This blend is silky in the mouth, with smooth yet robust flavours — a warming, homely tea.”




So, you may remember that some time ago, when I was reviewing Adagio’s Pumpkin Potion I bewailed the lack of a decent low or caffeine-free tea with a strong flavour of pumpkin. There is Cinderella, from the Fairy Tale range also by Adagio, but that is made specifically for children and so it has a very subtle flavour, which I love, particularly when I’ve got a migraine and can’t cope with strong tastes, smells etc. but find a touch bland outside of those times.

I was hoping that Gentle Pumpkin Fruit Tisane might be the tea I was looking for — and it is — but only intermittently.

Let me explain. Gentle Pumpkin Fruit Tisane is a pleasant caffeine-free tea (tisane) with a decent flavour after about ten minutes of brewing (K&S say 5-7, I left it for 20 and it was still just as drinkable). It has a nice taste with the vanilla coming through relatively strongly, but without overpowering the whole, as does the pumpkin and the orange.

[sorry no picture of the drink - I was so busy drinking the tea I forgot to take a picture of it. I shall add next time I have a cup]

However, as with all blends, what you get in your spoon of tea isn’t always going to be the same and there is an awful lot of orange in this tisane. This means that quite often the tea tastes more strongly of orange than anything else — and it really does overpower all the other ingredients.

Happily, I like orange, so this isn’t a problem but I can’t help but wish that there were more pumpkin and less orange. Also, interestingly, this tisane doesn’t contain any of the spices that you usually find associated with pumpkin. I quite like that, too.

Overall, regardless of the flavour, I like this tisane very much — it is extremely good as a relaxant at the end of a long day and I think it will make for a nice Autumn drink so I will definitely be buying some more. 





I am taking a short break to head off on my holidays (just to get away from the laptop if nothing else) so it will be a few weeks before my next post. I have a lot of teas I need to review, I just need the time to drink and review them.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Honey Bee Beautiful - Bluebird Tea Co.

Image
So, tea that smells like weeds – I honestly can’t stand the stuff. When I was a teenager and still living at home my mum used to ‘enjoy’ and I use the word loosely drinking things like chamomile tea, a beverage which made me feel ill. It was the smell, mainly. I couldn’t even get as far as tasting it because the horrible smell was so off-putting. Fortunately, years have passed and chamomile is no longer quite as popular as it once was and so I’ve managed to keep away from its terrible ditch water smell, until today.  Today, I decided to try the Bluebird Tea Company’s Honey Bee Beautiful as I was having quite a stressful day at work (and that was before I found out about the General Election) and wanted something soothing. Ingredients: Rooibos, honeybush, chamomile, nettle leaves, cornflowers, calendula petals, flavour They describe it thus: ‘Have you ever considered the work it must take to make a queen bee? Their beauty regime is extensive and their mu...
Read more

Favourite Tea League Table (Updated 12 August 2017)

Image
I thought it might be useful if I keep a league table of my top 10 favourite teas, going forward. This list reflects the favourites of those I've drunk recently rather than all-time favourites as I've discovered its very difficult to have an all time list when I'm trying so many different teas and what I like is affected by the weather or the time of year.  For instance, over Christmas and through the winter I drank enough Gingerbread Chai to sink a battleship (is that a thing?) and I would definitely have said it was my all time favourite tea. But at the moment I have no interest in drinking it at all because it seems to me that its the wrong time of year for it and so it's dropped from the top of the charts completely off the list. It will definitely be back by Christmas, though, that I can guarantee. The only thing I can say with any certainty is that my all time favourite tea is definitely China Milk Oolong from Camellia's Tea House. I could, quite...
Read more

Oolong Formosa – Kent & Sussex Tea & Coffee Co.

Image
Today’s tea is the truly delightful  Oolong Formosa by the  Kent & Sussex Tea & Coffee Co. Ingredients: Formosa Oolong tea They describe it thus: "Oolong Formosa is a Speciality Tea which originates from the mountains of Taiwan. After plucking the loose leaf teas are fermented to approximately 50% and then wilted in the sun. Frequent turning of the tea in bamboo baskets during the drying process allows the Oolong to develop a mild aroma and large wild curly leaves. This Loose Leaf Tea is a real treasure." This tea is quite unlike any other Oolong I have tried so far.  It is far darker than the Milky, Fleur d’ Orient or Vietnamese Oolongs, being brown rather than yellow in colour and the flavour, whilst extremely pleasant, is far more substantial than the traditional Oolong taste and reminds me more of a Yunnan tea. That quintessential tea flavour which can be found in abundance in black teas is really picked up in this on...
Read more