Tea Writings

A blog about tea from the desk of Cecilia Tan
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The mellowness of vanilla

May 07, 2009 By: ctan Category: Tea Reviews

The majority of the vanilla teas I have had are black teas. Both in canned varieties from the Chinatown grocery stores (usually in an oval pink can) and the gourmet flavored teas (like the Mighty Leaf Orange Dulce seem to always mix vanilla with black.

Indeed, one of my favorite recent acquisitions is a black vanilla jasmine from Tealuxe. A friend gave it to me in a sampler pack for my birthday, and not only is the idea of black jasmine a revelation, but the mixture of vanilla with the jasmine makes one of the most incredibly mellow cups ever. Jasmine can sometimes be sharp or the perfume can turn bitter, but not when vanilla is rounding everything out like a white puffy cloud in a blue sky.

I also recently discovered that this black vanilla jasmine is outstanding when iced. As soon as the weather warms up, I will be running out of it soon.

But the tea I keep finding in my pot again and again this past month has been Vanilla Green Tea, from Metropolitan Tea Co. in Toronto.

This tea I bought on a whim at the pseudo-Indian bazaar in Disney’s Animal Kingdom. They had a whole selection of teas on sale in little wooden boxes. I’m something of a sucker for wooden boxes–not so much for tea, which I prefer to keep in cans, but for knickknacks and other things. My dresser is piled high with them. Well, here was a tea that looked intriguing, was not expensive (around $7), and came in a wooden box!

I had not been familiar with Metropolitan Tea Co. before, and I had never had a vanilla GREEN before.

It’s a very pleasing tea. It comes in bags, so it’s good for those mornings when my brain just can’t handle the strainer basket and measuring the loose leaves. It’s not tremendously high quality–a second steeping comes out pretty weak–but I’ve been choosing it often on these back-and-forth weather days where it goes from cold and rainy to sunny and breezy, back to dank and foggy again and again. When my supply runs out, I’ll probably try to get more, and would definitely try some other teas from Metropolitan.

0 Comments to “The mellowness of vanilla”


  1. yarakot says:

    Thank you for creating this, Cecilia! Your tea comments are one of the things I like best about your twittering. You’ve brought me back to tea drinking.

    Carolyn

    1
  2. @yarakot

    Thanks, Carolyn! I love tea for being one of the fine sensory pleasures in life, and yet not fattening, tiring, bad for the brain… 🙂

    2


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