Paralleling nicely with my post last week on Kenyan Ajiri Tea, recently I happened upon an 8 tea variety box of Argentinian teas called “Inti Zen” (http://www.intizen.com.ar) by Ines Berton. It was on clearance and I’m always up for trying elusive international teas. Naturally the packaging is utterly in Spanish (complete with some awesome Spanglish: “Soothe the words”), so I can’t gleam much from it. For whatever it’s worth, the English ad on the box states, “Inti Zen blends aromas from the Andean Mountains, flavours from Patagonia, textures from Brazil with the finest teas from the foothills of the Himalayas and Ceylon.”
When I put the description for Patagonia Bee into Google Translate I got, “Indian black tea with Honey, Vanilla and Cocoa.” So there you have.
Patagonia Bee is really highly honeyed. It was pouring out of the spout of my tetsubin like molasses. It’s easy to use too little water when you don’t know really what you’re making. It also smells like raw honey. In appearance it’s kind of a weak translucent black. So no surprise, it has a very definite honey aftertaste. I”m not sure I can detect the vanilla or cacao necessarily, but I’m sure it’s in there somewhere. Similarly, I couldn’t begin to guess which Indian black is used here. My uber sensitive IBS-ridden stomach immediately reacted negatively to all the honey and I might need to chug some antidote in a minute, but it’s almost worth it for this very unique liquid manna tea. It’d probably make a great additive to another tea or to cut an overly harsh pu-erh, etc. Cheers!
選別 parting.gifts 