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Welcome to Steepster, the Little Website That Couldn’t! Here’s hoping it’ll actually let me post this.

This tea was a Christmas gift from Ashmanra (thanks!) for the ongoing Hunt for a London Cuppa Replacement. On first try I find it a tiny bit weak – perhaps underleafed? I don’t usually make tea in pots but I did this morning so Ashmanra could try it as well. I’ll have to try it again a bit stronger later and see how I feel about it then. It is decent, and there is a resemblance to my old standby of London Cuppa (same/similar teas in the base, which is why it was chosen). Even if I can’t find a way to make it stronger I won’t mind finishing the tin.

One of the teas @Ashmanra has picked up in the quest to find me a replacement for London Cuppa (thanks!). I would describe it as aggressively okay. It’s fine, I’ll have no problem drinking the whole box, but a new regular it is not. I might have liked it better if I didn’t already have the much nicer Yorkshire Gold (also a gift from Ashmanra. If you think there’s a pattern there, you are correct). The main good thing about Yorkshire Red is how available it is – our regular grocery stores have it, no hunting, no paying for shipping, just grab it at the same time as I buy everything else. But I find it’s worth my while to make a special trip to get the Yorkshire Gold from the one store in town that carries it, if I’m getting a bagged tea.

The first tea I ever liked. The tea that got me through high school algebra, through geometry, and through college. Through cold (ish) winter days, and through every illness that scraped my throat raw and made my stomach shudder. For a long time, I was a one-tea kinda gal, and this was my tea. We used to find it intermittently at TJ Maxx, sometimes loose leaf, sometimes bags, and would always stock up when we could. Thankfully we later found online sources that were much more reliable…while it lasted. I’ve probably been drinking this tea for closer to twenty years than ten (This is the sort of math London Cuppa would have made me feel less sad about) and it was a regular on my list for when people needed gift ideas at birthdays and Christmas. It was a terrible shock when I found out they were shut down (and sadly, too late to stock up – they were already gone by the time I heard). I have one box left, and now I face the conundrum – do I drink it now, so that my last memory of The Tea is of it still reasonably fresh? Or do I save it, hoard it, like the saddest little dragon?