I was going through the tea cabinet, looking for teas for the sipdown challenge that Northern Teaist mentioned. Apart from finding a few white tea flower buds that smelled a bit suspicious (I haven’t quite decided whether to sipdown or throw), I also came across a packet of tea that I’ve never seen before.

While I am the main supplier of tea, other members of my family do occasionally come back with loose leaf teas. This is probably one of them. The package had a cute little purple teapot stamped in front, with this label at the back:

“LavenderTea: Jasmine Tea, Lemon Verbena & Lemon Balm, Lavender Flowers”

I was intrigued mainly because despite the tea being called Lavender Tea, lavender was listed as the last ingredient, which means that most of the tea… probably isn’t lavender.

I tipped out some tea onto the plate and saw that while there were a few lavender flowers/buds in there, the majority looked to be like tea leaves. There was also a bigger sort of lower, which I think is the jasmine?

Brewing this tea resulted in a light brown liquor that smelled faintly of lavender. So far it’s pretty promising.

The taste though, was not great. It was vaguely medicinal for some reason. I could make out the lavender notes, but not very strongly. Personally, I didn’t think that the combination of lavender, jasmine, and lemon verbana went well. I initially thought it was the jasmine’s fault but thinking it over, it could be the lemon verbena’s influence that added a faintly medicinal quality.

Also, this had the side effect of making my stomach rumble embarrassingly loudly after drinking. Luckily I tried this at home after I came back from the Christmas market and Niigata fair.

Taking a look at the spent leaves, I was surprised to see mostly whole leaves because I didn’t taste the tea in this. I actually forgot it wasn’t a tisane until I looked at the spent leaves.

Overall, not a tea for me. On the bright side, whoever bought this tea probably doesn’t have to worry about me stealing it.