Starfruit/Strawberry is a unique fruity white tea blend from ESP Emporium, an online tea seller.
Okay – ESP Emporium – your shipping price SUCKS! At the time of this blog post, it’s $7.95 (unless you spend $45, then it’s free). I purchased my tea over a sale weekend, and they sent it First Class USPS with tracking. Come on, shipping 4 oz of tea probably costed $3-$4! My tea came with a coupon code at least! ESP Emporium has a big selection of fruity teas
Anyways, onto the tea – STARFRUIT TEA???? YES! I’ve never seen starfruit tea! I love starfruit, it was my favorite fruit as a child. When I saw this tea, I went into some kind of TEA RAMPAGE and needed to have it, despite the crappy shipping costs.
DRY LEAF: Very tangy and fruity smell! Also, Starfruit/Strawberry has a great appearance – huge starfruit slices, papaya cubes and little red petals. Impressive appearance!
I couldn’t locate any strawberry chunks.FYI, the papaya cubes like to settle to the bottom since the tea and starfruit is so light. I had to dig out the starfruit to mix the bag better. SO MUCH STARFRUIT!
this was like 2/3 of the starfruit in my 50gram bag!
The ingredients doesn’t state what kind of white tea this is – however on the website states it is Pai Mu Tan/ Bai Mu Dan romanization confusion.
STEEPED: Very clean, sweet strawberry smell with a hint of sweet florally white tea. I did a 185F steeping for 2 minutes. The recommended steeping is 176F to 194F for 2 to 3 minutes.
I snacked on the starfruit and…. they taste like white tea!
Also, when I was steeping and later pawing through the steeped tea, I noticed I got a lot of twiggy bits.
TASTE: Light juicy tea that is nicely naturally sweet. There is a light strawberry and tropical flavor. I can pick out a teeny bit of starfruit – the inner core of the fruit. The aftertaste is surprisingly mellow and almost fluffy. The white tea base is okay, I found it a little flat than other white blends I’ve had.
Sweetened, this tea changes form drastically. The strawberry flavor is candy like and I can pick out the papaya.
Iced, this tea is even more juicy. The fruityness is bright, good and I oddly pick out a little floral. I didn’t get pics as I inhaled this very fast!
COMMENTS: Chunky teas like this are cool, but I’m not sure if I’m getting the right spread of tea base and chunks. I didn’t get any sour notes as stated on ESP Emporium product page. As much as I like the appearance, I’m tempted to go in my tea pouch with scissors and cut up the starfruit.
The bad, I was expecting more fruit flavor with tarty funky starfruit and I wish the white tea base was nicer. However, the flavor is nice, light and fruity. The visual appearance of this tea is awesome and it makes a good sweetened, iced tea!
Hey, tea blenders – lets see more Starfruit teas!
