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knittingopera Swap Advent Calendar 2024 – Day 17
Theme: Santa’s Reindeer
My pick: Cereal Lover Caramel from Dammann Frères

Ooh! I’ve been curious about this for a while. It’s one of those teas that sounds good to me in theory – a chocolate mint black tea and maté blend – but that I’m hesitant to actually purchase in order to try. Chocolate flavoring and I don’t get along, plus Adagio and I often also don’t get along… So thanks Marjorie, for picking this so I get to try a sample!

As I expected, it’s not my favorite. The peppermint is very murky-tasting, and something else is very, shall we say, earthy. Maybe it’s the ginger? And then the chocolate flavoring is quite prominent, and has that fake, almost alcoholic chocolate taste. It’s all very sharp together, and a touch bitter (though it has also now cooled). Drinkable, but very, very muddled for sure.

But super happy to have tried it, now I don’t have to be curious anymore! XD

Advent Calendar 2024 – Day 17

Two literary black teas in a row? Interesting choice. Sometimes I wonder how much thought tea companies really put into the order of their advent teas ha ha. But we haven’t seen many holiday teas yet, so they must be saving them for the end, which does imply they thought about it…

Anyway, I wasn’t sure what to make of the ingredients for this one, but it’s actually quite nice! I was a bit afraid of the puerh, but luckily it’s quite mild and blends well with the black tea. The balance of black tea, puerh, and lapsang is very good – a nice mix of smooth, satisfying, earthy, and savory smoke without anything overpowering the other elements. I do think it needs a touch more bergamot, as all that is a lot to compete with ha ha. I can taste some bergamot, especially in the finish, but would like more to better offset the hefty base. My sample must have not had enough beet pieces in it, because my cup is a reddish brown at best.

Still, quite a nice one! Would happily sip again.

The jam today is… strawberry and strawberry ha ha. It’s Strawberry-Wild Strawberry Spread. I don’t have a concept of what wild strawberries taste like, the ones I tried when I was young mostly tasted like water. This was delicious though, very punchy and intense strawberry flavor and not too sweet.

DIY Herbal Infusion Advent Calendar 2024 – Day 16
Name: Cinnamint
Ingredients: tulsi, peppermint, spearmint, cinnamon
Movie: Home Alone 2

A lovely, more simple blend tonight. I love the combination of the warmth and spice of the tulsi and the cinnamon with the cooling sensation of the mint. Almost like a fire and ice sort of vibe, but more mellow than that sounds. Tulsi is becoming one of my favorite herbal bases these days, it’s delicious and so versatile!

knittingopera Swap Advent Calendar 2024 – Day 16 (my pick …sort of)
Theme: A White Tea
Her pick: White Angels from The English Tea Room
My pick: White Crow 2022 from Bitterleaf Teas

So this wasn’t actually my pick for today, but I don’t have any of that tea left, so I’m having this as a substitute! I used about half of a coin and steeped it Western-style. It came out so lovely and creamy, almost like oatmeal with cream added to it. Honestly not getting a ton of the orange, but I don’t even mind because the white tea itself is so lovely! :)

knittingopera Swap Advent Calendar 2024 – Day 16
Theme: A White Tea
My pick: White Crow 2022 from Bitterleaf Teas

This is a blueberry, vanilla, and pomegranate flavored white tea. It smelled really good in the pouch, like blueberry muffins! Steeped up, it’s a bit more of a candy blueberry flavor, and I don’t really notice the vanilla or pomegranate. The white base isn’t my favorite, very different from the Bush Berry one, and a bit musty.

Advent Calendar 2024 – Day 16

Holiday tea number four from Bush Berry! This is a white tea with walnut flavor. Honestly I don’t love walnuts, so wasn’t terribly excited, but the package is really cute so that helps ha ha.

It’s actually a lovely tea – the bai mudan base is so light and fluffy with its soft hay notes. And then the flavoring is a bit like a cookie or pastry of some kind, yes it has definitely walnut notes, but also a buttery element to it, sort of like the Simpson & Vail walnut shortbread tea from earlier in the month. Not sweet per se, but definitely rich. Almost like a macadamia nut? Really liked the pairing with the lighter base.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DDp0qPoPgtX/

Okay, okay, so I had to get the Schitt’s Creek teas from Harney. Mostly for the tins, but I was surprised to find that this blend (for the Rosebud Motel) and the Botanical Blend (Rose Apothecary) are both actually new teas. A lot of times it seems like Harney just packages their existing teas into decorative tins, sometimes with a slight change as in Gingerbread Festival and the Williamsburg Ginger Cake (tastes the same but with orange added).

This one is a cinnamon roll black tea, which I don’t think they have another version of. It’s not at all similar to Hot Cinnamon Spice, as it doesn’t have that intense Red Hots cinnamon flavor. It’s quite mellow, actually. I’m surprised by how much I can taste the icing/glaze part of the cinnamon roll, and then there is a buttery element as well as the mellow cinnamon. It’s nice! A bit thin, so I might try two sachets for a 12-ounce cup next time and see how that goes (normally I do 1 sachet per 8 ounces). Honestly kind of reminds me of a Simpson & Vail tea in that aspect, earthy base and a bit thin ha ha.

(ETA: It looks like Botanical Blend is the same as their Mind Your Body Lemon Balm Chamomile, but still didn’t find anything similar to this tea.)

Advent Calendar 2024 – Day 16

Yay, more literary tea! Not sure if it’s just the distribution of ingredients in my sample, but I’m not getting the lavender at all here. I think I could smell it in the packet, but didn’t pay that much attention ha ha. Mostly I taste spearmint and the earthy/woody/musty black tea base. I smell a lot of vanilla, but only taste a little bit, and it’s more of a smoothness/creaminess than specifically vanilla.

Not bad, but I wanted more of everything ha ha. I’m sure this one is in the literary sampler, so hopefully I’ll get around to ordering that one of these days, and then I can try it again. :P

Today’s jam is White Nectarine-Peach Spread. To me, it’s like why even add the peach at all when those two things are so similar ha ha, but I digress. It’s a very tasty stonefruit jam, and delicious with a bit of butter as well. Nectarine is a nice variation on the usual apricot!

DIY Herbal Infusion Advent Calendar 2024 – Day 15
Name: Orange Spice
Ingredients: kuki-hojicha, orange, cinnamon, clove, allspice
Movie: Jingle All The Way

Yay, more hojicha ha ha! This one is an orange spice blend, with slices of dried orange, slivers of cinnamon, just a touch of clove, and some allspice, because why not? The base is Suzume Hojicha, a kuki-hojicha from Obubu. It didn’t come out as orange-y as I would’ve liked, but I also didn’t break up the orange slices before steeping, which I meant to do… Still, it was a lovely warmly spiced and toasty hojicha with a dash of orange!

knittingopera Swap Advent Calendar 2024 – Day 15 (my pick)
Theme: All Is Bright
Her pick: Blood Orange Smoothie from Spice of Life & Variety Teas

I thought this would be a fun one to send to Marjorie, as I know she drinks a lot of iced/cold steeped tea, and this is one of my favorites for that. I thought I would try it hot tonight, since I’ve never had it that way. And it’s nice! It came out a little bit weak with the amount I used, but just as lovely as it is cold. Tangy, but not too much so, and such a bright sea buckthorn and orange flavor. There’s something a little bit apricot-y about it as well, or maybe even persimmon? Which adds nice richness and dimension. Yummy!