This, the last for a bit of fruit and cream flavored black teas from Culinary Teas, is absolutely perfect for this time of the year. Fall in New England means brightly colored foliage (well, at least most years...) and tons of squash and pumpkin. Now, I have to admit, pumpkin flavored tea sounded odd when I first saw it on the website. In my experience, mixing pumpkin with other stuff doesn't always work out so well. Pumpkin coffee is pretty wrong, and pumpkin beers tend to run the range from "Ok, I guess" to "Wow, that's nasty!" So it's a refreshing surprise that pumpkin and cream flavored tea is actually pretty good.
The tea is the usual Ceylon blend for many of the fruit flavored teas, and while it continues to work quite well, I'm starting to wish for a bit more variety in tea bases. I know that the tea is meant to play second fiddle to the flavors, but I think a bit more creativity in matching tea bases to added flavors would be more interesting. Perhaps that's just because I've had so many "x and cream" teas lately. At any rate, the Ceylon is a good base, and the earthy pumpkin and sweet cream really blend well with the tea. Although it sounded weird at first glance, after thinking about it, the flavor of pumpkin is probably a more natural fit than sweeter fruits. The vegetal flavor and mild natural sweetness pair up so well with the similar characteristics in the tea, and as always, the cream provides a touch of vanilla and that amazing velvet texture. As with all the cream teas, pumpkin cream plays wonderfully with milk and sugar. One oddity I found with pumpkin cream is that the loose tea itself is a smaller leaf size, which means a slightly faster brew, with stronger flavors from the tea. I don't know if this was incidental, or if some aspect of the flavoring demanded a faster steep time, but I shaved a minute off the steep time and still got a full bodied, well developed cup. Score: 90 (A-) All right, it's time for a break from the "whatnot and cream" teas, as excellent as they are!
Do you add milk to these cream teas or are they good by themselves?
ReplyDeleteI have to disagree about pumpkin coffee. When "Pumpkin is back!" is the only time I get excited to go to Dunkin Donuts.
I'm so used to adding milk to them that it never occurred to me to try them without it. I imagine they'd be decent without.
ReplyDeletePumpkin coffee, I don't know...it has been a pretty long time since I tried it, but I don't remember it being a rousing success.