Wow. This was one of the best-executed, if not THE best, fruit black teas I've ever tried.

I'm not normally a fan of flavored teas, but I had the opportunity to smell this at my parent's house, and the leaf smelled really appealing. The fruitiness is strong but it doesn't completely cover the aroma of the tea itself: some toasty notes come through. The fruitiness also smells very pleasant. It reminds me a little bit of Ahmad's Peach & Passion fruit black tea, one of the few fruit-flavored black teas that I'm fond of.

Upon brewing, produces a fairly dark cup with a strong aroma that is both fruity and toasty, with some notes of wood. The flavor is moderately bitter. Full-bodied and thick. One thing I like aboth this tea is that the fruitiness is present through the whole sip, from before I sip it when I'm just holding the cup up to my face, to mid-sip, through the finish. Quite complex for a fruit tea...and the toasty notes blend very well with the fruit flavoring.

The finish is also very clean.

I liked brewing for 3 minutes. I experimented with a longer steep and it didn't affect the tea much.

Resteeps well. The resteep is very different in character though; the mango flavoring is still very present, but the tea presence is weaker, and particularly the toasty notes are diminished. It was pleasant to drink, but lacked the distinctiveness of this brew.

One comment: the picture of the leaf shown both on the packaging, and on the company's website, shows a liberal quantity of flower petals, and these were almost entirely absent from the tin we got. The leaf was also much more finely-broken than in the picture. I found this slightly deceptive or dishonest, and I'm docking this review a bit because of that. I think it's very important that companies accurately present their products. If they used to use a higher-grade, more intact tea, and/or put more flower petal in, that's fine if they want to change it, but I think they really need to update their image or I'm gonna hold them accountable with a lower point score.

And it's not like they NEED to use a higher grade tea here...I thought this tasted great and had plenty of depth and complexity. I'm just REALLY tired of sloppy marketing with low-grade dishonesty, and I wish these companies would clean stuff like this up. Plenty of companies don't do it at all, and I would urge Tao of Tea to fix this. They're a legit enough company that they don't need to stoop to this sort of thing.

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Comments:

Tchuggin' Okie wrote: on January 15th, 2019

This sounds like a tea I should get, being a fan of fruit-flavored teas and mango in particular, and I hold your reviews in highest esteem. I'm with you on the sloppy/deceptive marketing practices too. It's bad enough coming from some questionable, no-name, out-of-woodwork tea outfit, but from well-established companies like this (or Tazo, as we discussed on reviewing their "Butterscotch Blondie" blend), it's absolutely inexcusable. Thanks for noting that...my expectations are adjusted accordingly, but I'll still probably try this one.

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