Primula Tea, Fairy Lily

It has been a while since I steeped a flowering tea. I thought today it was time I did another review. The Primula teas can to me as a gift from a thoughtful friend. There were originally 12 blooms or pods in the round canister that is fashioned to look like bamboo. Each pod comes wrapped separately. They are round and smell lightly of jasmine.

For this one I prepared 24 ounces of boiling water and poured it into my press. Then I added the pod. It bubbled and slowly settled to the bottom opening graciously as it did. The bloom revealed a lovely red lily and lengthy string of jasmine flowers surrounded by the green tea needles. The bloom stayed perfectly intact with no broken floaters.

The liquor turned darker quicker than I anticipated. You only get one shot with a blooming tea, fortunately they are very forgiving as long as the water was hot enough at the beginning. For a green tea the brew was pretty dark. There was no bitterness in the taste and only a bit of dry mouth feel. The taste was lightly jasmine but mostly the lily flavored the drink. I could not taste the tea leaf in this one. This one is not the most wonderfully flavored flowering tea I have tried but it certainly isn’t the worst. I had two cups and it would have re-steeped, I just ran out of time today.

Flowering teas are never something I grab because I crave the taste. I brew them because they are pretty to look at. The novelty and entertainment value of this one is high and as a bonus the taste is not bad.