Very Vanilla (Kokomo)

Friday is Black Tea, Floral Tea, Fruit Tea, Chai and Pu’erh Review Day!

This smooth vanilla black tea blend from Kokomo Tea is interesting. I have very high hopes for this company I found on Twitter!

I was very excited when I ran across this blended black tea. Vanilla is almost a holy grail for me, it’s subtle but firm and exquisitely creamy and smooth. Vanilla is just one of those flavors for me personally (like Raspberry).

The aroma for this blend isn’t as strong as I would have liked. Clearly it’s vanilla, but more resembling a vanilla blend of Masala Chai than say, a vanilla Ceylon or Chinese black tea.

True to Vanilla’s nature however, this tea is very smooth, almost melting in the mouth like a chunk of white chocolate. Not so subtle tones of Masala Chai overpower a more pure vanilla experience, but certainly don’t do any harm to this tea, providing a unique blending of Vanilla with a lighter CTC style Assam.

This tea is soothing, not brisk and the body follows suit as very balanced. It brews up a beautiful cider red.

While I personally would have preferred a stronger tone of Vanilla this blend was refreshing and soothing to my palette. I’d recommend it for anyone who happens to like vanilla as a rule, or to someone looking for a well balanced black tea without much of a bite or any pronounced astringency.