About a year ago, I participated in a swap with someone in the United Kingdom and she sent me some tea from the The Kent & Sussex Tea & Coffee Co.   She actually sent me two flavors, but for today I’ll only discuss one, the Blood Orange Black Tea.

From the package, this blend contains both China and Ceylon teas, with orange peel and red safflowers.

When I opened the package I was surprised at how pretty the blend was – you can see the chunks of orange peel and the little bits of red safflower.

This tea is available in various size packets: 50g for £1.86 (~$3.08 as of the writing of this post), 125g for £3.40 ($5.64), 250g for £6.12 ($10.15), 500g for £11.25 ($18.66) or 1 Kilo for £21.40 ($35.49).  I also played around a little and added a few 50g samples to my cart and even international postage appears to be reasonable.

The first thing I noticed when I opened the packet was the tangy smell of orange peel.  However, after I had poured the hot water in, the aroma I noticed most was the safflower.  It gave the black tea a flowery, almost honeyed smell.

I was a little afraid that the flowery aroma would overpower the tea, and I think it did a little bit. It was a good strong black tea, but I didn’t get much orange out of it and I found the safflower a little much for my tastes.  If you like more herbal/flower blends you might want to try this.  I chose my standard sweetener, about half a packet of Splenda, but I think it would also might work well with a little honey.