The home of the Tillamook Dairy (as in Tillamook Cheese) is a mere 2 hour drive from where I live.  I tell you this because the Tillamook Dairy is the only place I have found my very favorite ice cream:  White Licorice.  It tastes just like a good, stout black licorice, only it is bright, snowy white in color.

By now, you are probably looking at the top of the screen wondering if you are on the ‘Ice Cream Review Blog’ or the ‘Tea Review Blog’.  Rest assured, you are on the Tea Review Blog.  I just told you that little bit about my favorite ice cream because when I first smelled this tea, in its dry form, I was immediately transported (via memory only, of course) to Tillamook Dairy.  This tea smells just like that ice cream tastes!  Like a bold bit of black licorice!  YUM!

The flavor of the tea does wander a bit off from the flavor of the ice cream, but that does not disappoint me, because, well, I am drinking TEA after all, not eating ice cream.  I want to be able to taste the flavor of the white tea – and I do!  And to say that I’m surprised by that would be an understatement.  I truly did not expect to be able to taste the clean, fresh flavor of the white tea leaves over the extraordinarily strong licorice notes.

The tea leaves are pale green with white downy fluff and silvery tips.  These beautiful leaves have been scented with licorice essence and are then tossed with an ample amount of star anise – a spice that has a very licorice quality to it.

The licorice flavor is sharp with a complexity that is difficult to describe without resorting to using “licorice” as the description.  I love a good, old fashioned licorice candy like Good ‘n’ Plenty, and this tea possesses much of the same character as can be found with this old-time favorite.

Golden Moon Tea describes this tea as

First in the world to find flavored white tea, Golden Moon Tea presents to you a White Licorice tea that is a rare white loose leaf tea leaves perfumed with deep, Far-Eastern essence of licorice.

The beautiful, large leaves are intimately mingled with star anise to produce an intriguing, sweet bouquet in this white licorice tea.

Ingredients:

White tea, star anise

The first infusion of this tea proved to be rather soft-tasting to the palate, but I found that the longer you allow the tea leaves to steep, the more pronounced the flavors become, and without bringing an unfriendly bitter taste to the cup, just be sure the water is not too hot (when I brew white tea, I pull the kettle when a good amount of steam develops, and tiny, rapid bubbles form at the base of the kettle, with an occasional tiny bubble escaping and rising to the surface).

With the subsequent infusions, I allowed the tea to brew a little longer than I normally would (for my first infusion, I allowed it to steep for 4 minutes), and found that this gave the cup a nice depth of flavor, one truly worthy of the name “White Licorice.”  It did, after all, have a lot to live up to, sharing the same name as my favorite ice cream.

I prefer this tea hot with a small amount of sweetener to bring out some of the complex flavors of the licorice.  And, as an added bonus, it’s delightfully soothing to a sore throat, and is far more pleasant than cough syrup.

Yes, I would say that this tea truly does live up to its name.  It is an EXCELLENT flavored white tea.