Another "conference tea" here...I had a couple bags there, and brought another home to steep in boiling well water. Water quality at the meeting was good, so my impressions were consistent in both places.

The best part of this tea was its dry-bag smell: potent, high-quality bergamot, but still not too much to overpower the aroma of tea. I wish the in-cup scent and flavor were that luscious! The in-cup aroma was somewhat offputting, with little bergamot and a distinct character of soggy, musty, harvested grain that has been left in storage too long. I haven't been drinking stale beer out of my tea cup either, so it wasn't the cup! With one outstanding aroma, and one rather poor one, the "aroma" rating overall fell into mid-ranges.

I sweeten my tea rather strongly, but a good deal of bitterness still came through. The brew darkens quickly and is very tannic also, perhaps due to the fine chopping of the leaves, but also the use of a natively dark and bitter tea. Sweetening makes it tolerable, but I can see how this tea would be uncomfortably bitter for some. The good news is that the flavor brings back much of the bergamot, and none of the moldy sensation I got from simply sniffing the liquid. The aftertaste has a bit of a cooling effect, best reflecting some astringency arising from the bergamot oil. Oddly, the wet-bag aroma didn't have mustiness either; it was rather bland, faintly tea-like and weakly bergamot-bearing.

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