$20.00 – $260.00
Juneteenth marks a date of major significance in American history and represents the ways in which freedom for black people have been delayed. It’s a reminder that “nobody is free until everybody is free. It should be celebrated as a day when all Americans were liberated and created equal.
Use 1 level tsp. per 6-8 oz. cup; heat fresh water to a boil; let steep for 3-5 mins. 4 ounces makes 45-50 cups of tea.
Black teas studies:
We’re launching this new a tea to commemorate this occasion. Research shows the majority of the slaves forcefully brought to the Low Country Region originated from the West Indies. Cheers to Juneteenth and the work that still needs to be done!
406 E Oglethorpe Ave
Savannah, GA 31401
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Courtney P –
This is such a pretty tea straight out of the tin! It has a sweet, berry forward aroma and the colourful petals stand out against the dark black tea leaves. When steeped, it has a lighter, sweet smell. It’s smooth (no need for milk here!) and has an almost juicy-like finish thanks to the berries. This would be great as a light black tea with breakfast, but I’m also enjoying it as a little treat in the afternoon!
Laurie Petrill –
I thought black teas were bitter – wrong! West Indies Black Tea is very light for black tea with neutral astringency. Before brewing the flower petals are bright and festive against the black tea leaves and dried fruit. It has a fruity aroma of blackberry with a hint of raspberry once steeped. It is smooth to drink, needing no milk! And a lovely blackberry aftertaste.
Calvin Woodum –
First of all, I mostly, but not only drink green teas. I tend to gravitate to a lighter tea. But I genuinely love all teas that’s prepared for my palate.
With regards to the astringency, with this black tea, I don’t steep it very long.
It does have a full body but again if I steep it less, it’s not too strong.
It is bright, clean and have a lingering finish on tje tongue.
It has a strong and fragrant floral, which teases both your nasal when you first inhale and your taste bud with your first sip. You can almost immediately smell and taste the main ingredients of berries or fruits.
When I first tasted it, I thought it had a bourbon flavor to it. But then realized it’s the malt or muscatel that gives it that subtle flavor and aroma almost of a liquor.
The smoothness and softness of the black tea is ever so subtle.
So, please tey ATC’s Red Label West Indes Black Tea. The hibiscus, orange peel, raspberry, blackberry come bursting through with flavors. They each compete to make their presence known.
Calvin Woodum
Seth –
So, I received this tea some time ago and wanted to really sit down with it before coming to conclusions. I’m glad I did. This tea was a lot more than I was expecting. So, this review is going to be more than you’d expect from a normal sip-savor-say entry.
Just for backstory: I’ve always been a coffee person. I started drinking coffee at age 8, and I’m now 6’2”. So just imagine what would have happened if I didn’t stunt my growth, right? But as a teen, I had some very good luck to explore Europe and try new things I didn’t have in rural Indiana. I already drank plenty of bags of Lipton, sure, but I had quite a culture shock when the nice lady attending my Virgin Airlines flight from Heathrow to Brussels asked me if I wanted “milk” with my tea. Not even cream. Milk. I was just 18, nothing in life had prepared me for that.
This primed the pump of my taste buds to try to spend time listening, watching, smelling, taking everything in when I encountered tea abroad. In between language immersion sessions in Spain and France, I learned from my first stay that I shouldn’t automatically assume I’d have easy access to raw ingredients to enjoy in my flat. So, I stopped in a museum-like tea shop somewhere in the Old City of Vienna and shamelessly asked the friendly merchant to smell tin after tin. There was one tin that knocked my socks off and I bought a couple ounces, sure that I could later find something similar elsewhere. Surely if I remembered the name, I could find it stateside, right? (Note: the German phrases for “bloody mess” and “blooming medley” look pretty similar. Learn from my mistakes.)
After I made some pots in my new short-term digs in France, I went to their own British-run tea shop and tried desperately to find something similar, making sure to keep some of the original to take home. This second friendly British person in my tea journey was stumped, but she gave me something vaguely in the same territory. She seemed somewhat judgmental about my choice, like she was pandering to the locals… even though she was speaking fluent French in a British accent while I was speaking awful French in a Hoosier accent. Years pass and I keep roaming around the Midwest and the East Coast of the United States, hoping to someday find something that will evoke memories of those fragrant leaves I found in a red tin in a shop that looked like a time capsule of the Hapsburg Empire. The more I looked, the more I just came to accept that it was of a style that nobody seems to care for outside Austria.
When I finally got around to opening the wrapper for the sample I received from Ashford Teas, I was again dumbstruck. This was my black tea white whale: a homegrown blend that has all the right notes and essences of my great discovery years ago. Scent is a magical, time-traveling thing. The first time I had Thai food as a teen, the notes of lemongrass sent me spiraling years back to my great-grandmother’s cedar armoire with the same smell. This was another of those moments. I’m not saying that the blend is exactly the same… I’ve studied enough math to lead me to believe that the odds of that are not in anyone’s favor. But to be honest, that’s an improvement.
When I first finished the Blooming Medley (not a bloody mess) from Vienna, I had almost exclusively drank it straight. Sometimes I added honey. My impression of that, well, was anticlimactic. The actual taste simply didn’t match up to the olfactory bouquet. So with the West Indies blend from Ashford, I expected the same sensory comedown back to reality. I brewed it up and had a cup. It was a very good cup. Maybe the differences in the blend explain it, maybe my growth as a human being explains it, but the Ashford tea was simply better. The subtle notes were more present. The first blend was like drinking a relatively weak black tea after having left a flower shop. The Ashford blend was like drinking a proper black tea while hiding in a flower shop storeroom. The flavors were there. The flavors were excellent.
I was satisfied and felt like a great life goal was accidentally stumbled upon. But then it occurred to me that most people simply wouldn’t be interested in this tea in ways that I could describe that first experience because, again due to the hostile nature of statistics, most people probably wouldn’t have my sentimentality about it. So I asked myself, why would this tea appeal to the people in Vienna but not to the Brits or the Americans?
I thought through this problem. British people are very proud of their tea heritage. Their teas came in ships from The Orient, meaning half the time they had to be drowned in bergamot or otherwise given specific toasting for a specific purpose. But they do add milk (not cream!) and sugar. Continentals, on the other hand, have no prejudices about purity. They like what they like. That’s why, when you ride a train in Italy, they won’t be shy to serve awful instant coffee—they know that they’ve cornered the market on the world’s best espresso, so they don’t need to hide behind pretension when an adequate espresso machine won’t fit in the diner car.
I took a risk and I made myself a second helping of Ashford’s blend. Then, I did the American tea snob unthinkable: I added milk and sugar.
Let me put it this way: get this tea. Add milk and sugar. If you’re the kind of person whose sense of self precludes you from putting milk and sugar in your tea ever, then you might die being the person you want to be. But you won’t die happy.
“But Seth,” you might ask, “You haven’t said what it TASTES like!” Yes, yes I did. It tastes like a pleasant straight black tea consumed in a flower shop when taken straight. When taken with milk and sugar, it tastes like all that, except you’re in a flower shop where angels give you a foot massage. Besides, the ingredients are printed on the label. The Austrians never gave me that luxury.