Breathless from August Uncommon tea

I recently was sent some samples from August Uncommon.   Their premise is that August is "like no tea you've ever tasted before.  Our tea is wild, intense, and radically different."  I don't know if I would say that the tea blends are "radically different" as I have seen a lot of unique blends in my tea journey.  I will say though that the blends are interesting, fun and very flavorful. 

One of the teas  is called Breathless.  The description of the tea is "boozy black tea, white chocolate and prune."  This is an interesting combo for sure.  The package indicates that the tea is gluten free and non gmo.  I appreciate that August also includes tasting notes to let the consumer know what we should be tasting.  In the case of Breathless it should taste like armagnac, prune, dark cherry and whipped cream.  Interesting.  I had to look up what armagnac is as I am not up on my liquors.  It appears it is a brandy. 

I will say that one aspect I appreciate on their packaging is that in the ingredient panel August actually tells us what type of black tea is being used in the blend.  Often companies just simply put black tea down in a blend.  August goes one step further and indicates it is an Indian Assam black tea.  Other ingredients include hazelnut brittle (yum), sweet blackberry leaf, white chocolate, dried plum and flavoring.  The package does not make any distinction if the flavoring is natural or artificial. 

The first sip of the tea is nice, I get the initial hit of a pretty malty black tea base then the fruity plum develops followed by an ever so slight creaminess in the back end of the taste.  I can certainly see where why they say that the this tea tastes like dark cherry because the plum notes coupled with the malty black tea gives a dark cherry flavor. 

I really like this tea.  It is very complex, dark and enjoyable when drinking straight.  When I added a splash of soy milk the creamy notes developed more and gave a very dessert-like quality to this tea. 

Overall I am very impressed with all of the samples from August Uncommon.  I think that they are doing a fantastic job of reinventing what the basic perception of tea is.  They have left the safe confines of a traditional earl grey or english breakfast and are branching out to offer unique and interesting flavor combinations.  I think they are certainly worth checking out!

Comments

Popular Posts