Peaches and Cream black tea

I've been less than enthusiastic about fruit flavored teas in the past.  I haven't always had the best experiences with them, ranging from obvious artificial flavors to weak, bland, and overdried actual fruit.  Special Teas, an otherwise great tea company was especially guilty of this, but then they got bought out by Teavana, and I've never had anything from Teavana, since they're pretty expensive.

My wife, however, is quite fond of fruit flavored teas.  Her favorite is Culinary Teas' Strawberry Shortcake, which I've been meaning to review here for a long time, but a close second from Culinary Teas is their Peaches and Cream.  Some of Culinary Teas' flavored offerings come from Metropolitan Teas, and use a common base blend of Ceylon teas.  The reasoning, of course, is that this offers a solid, unremarkable base for the added flavors to shine through, and for the most part, I think this a great strategy.

So, Peaches and Cream is the Ceylon base with peach flavoring and cream added.  Culinary Teas really does the cream flavors well...they don't get that specific on their website, but I believe it's actual freeze dried cream, which lends a really smooth, mildly sweet note to the cup, and of course, is a natural addition to peaches.  We brew in the regular way, rolling boil, steep for four minutes, you know the drill.  The resulting cup is great...I may not have been the biggest fan of fruit teas in the past, but this is done right.  The tea is a strong, broad base, never obtrusive, and the peach is sweet but never overpowering, while the cream brings a velvety texture and a mild hint of vanilla.

Peaches and Cream also makes a great cup of iced tea.  For most iced teas, I'll brew double strength tea and dilute with ice, though for this batch, my wife made a huge batch in the dutch oven, strained the tea out, and we chilled it in a pitcher in the fridge.  It came out a hair strong, so we added plenty of sugar, and unusually for iced tea, cream.  I've only really come across cream or milk in iced tea in Thai tea, but in the right cup, it's a great addition, and of course, cream goes great with, well, cream.  Score:  90 (A-)