EusTea

Tea Review: Book Lover by Karel Capek

I bought this tea for a very shallow reason: I liked the name. In my defence, I really do love books and it is so hard to resist anything that combines two of my favourite hobbies (see also: books about tea. I’m definitely going to be A Thirst for Empire sometime in the future).

I’ve got the front of the cannister in the featured photo so here’s a photo of the back! It’s a quote from the director and instead of a description of the tea, it says:

“Preconditions of ‘Good Tea’ are its freshness, and its unique specialities of the region, and these can be achieved only be high skilled manufacturers. I think only good tea can be ‘Liquid Wisdom’. “

Utako Yamada

Can’t disagree with that!

Loving the seal on the back too!

According to the product description, Karel Capek’s Book Lover was created for the brand’s 30th anniversary. They use 100% hand-picked Nuwara Eliya tea, flavoured with European pear and peppermint.

The dry leaf has a minty and fruity smell. The fruity smell is a bit hard to pin down – it’s definitely not berries but I didn’t really think of pears either.

When brewed, the tea was a light brown colour and smelled pretty much the same as the dry leaf, albeit with a weaker mint note. The taste is refreshing even though the mint note wasn’t very strong. I could definitely tell this was a fruit-based blend, although I never would have guessed that the fruit was a pear if I hadn’t taken a look at the product page.

I also saw something that looked like an iced or cold-brew version on the product page, so I tried cold-brewing the tea as well. Unfortunately, the peppermint, which was not very strong even in the hot version, disappears almost completely in the cold brew version. It does come back a little if you let the tea sit and warm up a bit, but overall, I think I prefer to brew this hot.

This is a tea that will probably appeal to book lovers who like something fruity (although please don’t think “berries” for the fruity note). I really liked the blend of peppermint and fruit/pear here and am looking forward to serving this to my friends. Although I’ll be serving the tea hot, not cold.

More Information

Amazon Japan Product Page – Where I bought the tea

Karel Capek Product Page

Featured Image: Photo by me

What do you think?