On the first day of Christmas – this is the first tea of our Holiday countdown/advent calendar of tea! I was really happy that this tea won a fair number of votes in our poll from a few months ago because I thought it would be the perfect tea to include in our 12 Teas of Christmas box – as the first tea of course!
I used organic Chinese Sencha and freeze-dried pears along with some dried lingonberries. When I googled partridgeberries, I saw that there seem to be two different berries that are referred to as “partridgeberries” – the first are Michella repens and I couldn’t find anyone out there that sold them which didn’t really surprise me since from what I could tell, the berries are pretty flavorless. Who wants to buy flavorless berries?
A little bit more looking into my google search turned up another berry that is known as “partridgeberry” and that is the lingonberry. And HEY – I know that berry! I mean, I’ve been to IKEA. I figured it’d be easier for me to find a Lingonberry (Vaccinium vitis-idaea) than it’d be for me to find the Michella repens.
The berries are actually really small, so if you get something that looks kind of big (like the size of the cranberry) that’s actually a cluster of the berries. I tried to separate as many of the berries from each other as I could but these things are tiny and it became quite a task.
But they are certainly very festive looking amid the rich, green spears of Chinese Sencha and chunks of freeze-dried pear.
I really love this tea – I loved it back when Frank first blended it, and I am enjoying it immensely now. Sweet pear flavor with a hint of tart from the berry. Lovely!
