Ember's Tea Review: If I had to pick one tea to describe spring as a flavour, I would most likely pick Strawberry Champagne. There is just something about TeaDesire's Strawberry Champagne that seems all too fitting for this time of year. Perhaps it's the elegant and nuanced flavour of the tea, or the fresh and unmistakably fruity armour the tea has. Made with sencha green tea, carrot pieces, pineapple, strawberries, cornflower petals, and sunflower petals, Strawberry Champagne has a brightness to it that is sure to bring you out of your winter gloom. This is a fairly frequent sample we receive in our monthly Tea Sparrow box program where we get four different teas each month. There is usually a theme involved with the teas they pick, and Strawberry Champagne happened to be one of their March teas this year ( if you really love tea, or are willing to try new things, I highly recommend signing up for their program! ). From the moment I tore the sample bag the tea came in I could smell the succulent strawberry arouma. Anyone who knows me well knows that there are few things I love just as much as I adore tea. Strawberries are one of those things. The scent smelled just like perfectly sun ripened strawberries, with a hint of pineapple. The smell didn't shift too much after steeping it either! If anything, the strawberry flavour really got a foothold. The tea didn't really smell like a green tea at all, despite how pronounced sencha can be. The fascinating thing? It drank more like a green tea then it did a flavoured green tea. Don't get me wrong -- the strawberry flavour was definitely still there. The flavours were just so perfectly balanced that one flavour was not competing over the other, or overly pronounced. We had quite a heavily seasoned meal with our tea (our mistake), so some of the subtleties of this tea were lost. After waiting for my pallet to cleanse (and a bit of water to help), I had another cup. The new pour tasted divine! I would recommend Strawberry Champagne for those simply looking to have a nice, relaxing cup of tea. Strong flavours can easily overwhelm the taste of the tea. If you are going to have any kind of food with Strawberry Champagne, we recommend perhaps something more sugary to help bring out the sweetness of the fruit, like macrons for example. I also prefer this tea hot over cold, and as always with your green teas, using under boiling water and only steep for 1-2 minutes (I personally did a minute and a half)! Those who love the taste of green tea but are bored with what they have might like to mix things up with trying this tea. Those who prefer a strongly flavoured green tea may find this disappointing. Those tea drinkers out there that are looking to move away from overly strong flavoured green teas in to more traditional green teas may find Strawberry Champagne to be the perfect transition. At the end of the day, this is a lovely tea definitely worth taking a chance on. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Astra's Book Review: The Scarlet Pimpernel is perhaps the best forgotten gem of Georgian literature. You may recognize the name from the Loony Tunes parody “The Scarlet Pumpernickle”, or may have seen the play, Takarazuka revue, or either of two film adaptations (my favourite is the 1982 version starring Sir Anthony Andrews, Sir Ian McKellan, and the lovely Jane Seymour). But few have read the books, despite there being 14 in the series! I paired The Way of the Scarlet Pimpernel, by Baroness Orczy—the 6th installment in the Scarlet Pimpernel Adventures series—with Strawberry Champagne from TeaDesire for their shared sweetness, vivacity, and quaintness. “Everything that happened to me was so wonderful that I am ready to accept all your theories of the supernatural powers of the mysterious Scarlet Pimpernel.” You don’t need to have read the other books in the series (they are demmed hard to find! as Sir Percy would say). All you need know is this: the setting is the French Revolution, our hero an enigmatic Englishman who is master of disguise, risking life and limb to sneak into France repeatedly, saving the innocent from Mam’zelle la Guillotine while the agents of the revolution constantly try to trap him. Baroness Emmuska Orczy was a Hungarian-born British novelist and playwrite. Her tone harkens back to Regency-style prose, but is so over-the-top that it is almost of a parody of the stuffy style of Jane Austen, flamboyant characters of H.G. Wells, and daring-do of Robert Louis Stevenson. You can practically hear the over-acted way that the characters speak (which is delightfully captured in the 1982 film version) and this is a large portion of the book’s charm. The comedy of near misses, the eternal rivalry between Agent Chauvelin and the Scarlet Pimpernel, and its innocent love stories help to make an otherwise grim setting romantic. The Way of the Scarlet Pimpernel is perhaps an easier introduction than one of the books that focuses more heavily on the titular character, as folk who aren’t used to this style of writing may be put off by his foppish drawl and the wanton smattering of French used throughout. In this adventure, our focus is on a small middleclass family besieged by the Committee of the Republic of France. We start following Louise, the wife of a lawyer (Charles-Léon) that has thus far made himself useful and so escaped persecution. Louise is a somewhat limp protagonist who is not galvanized to action until tragedy strikes and she is determined to save her son from persecution. However, being none too useful, she mishandles nearly everything, and were it not for the Scarlet Pimpernel’s assistance, she surely would have perished. Persevere through Louise’s introduction, as it is mostly a foil to introduce us to (and contrast her personality with) our true heroine, Josette. As Louise’s handmaiden and confident, Josette’s pluck and extraordinary beauty have earned her the love of the family’s steadfast though dull clerk, Maurice. Yet it will take a threat on his life for Josette to realize how much she loves him in return. Josette is unsophisticated, but earnest, brave, and unflaggingly hopeful. She undertakes a daring quest to save her mistress and Maurice from death sentences. She becomes an unwitting pawn of Agent Chauvelin’s, mistakenly believing him to be a member of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel. But fear not, her plight attracts the attention of the real Scarlet Pimpernel, as our heroine is pitted in a race against time, subterfuge, and blackmail. The entire thing is as melodramatic and delightful as it sounds. If you are one to read aloud, it lends wonderfully to sharing with a friend or lover…perhaps while also sharing a pot of Strawberry Champagne. Enjoy l’amour et liberté as you are swept up in The Way of the Scarlet Pimpernel!
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AuthorsEmber and Astra joined forces to blog about their two deepest passions: books and tea! Here you will find information on various teas, and--alongside each tea--a book that will be perfectly paired and analyzed. The full book reviews (containing spoilers) as well as the source for the tea will be linked to in each blog post! Archives |