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!
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
Featured Image: Photo by me