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I have just crawled out of bed after getting my world absolutely rocked by a 1mg tablet of children’s melatonin. Adult dosages of 10-20mg maim me beyond utility for at least 24 hours after taking and leave me with an insatiable craving for a white, padded room, but apparently based on this dosage chart, I have the body chemistry of a 3-5 year-old, and the body chemistry of a 3-5 year-old has a very specific craving lately.

I used to love watermelon as a kid but over the years I’ve cooled off on it. Nowadays my preference for watermelon flavored things is surfacing (Wiley Wallaby’s watermelon licorice has got to be the hottest collab that watermelon has dropped to date). This watermelon oolong seemed like destiny, and that’s because it is.

The aroma is prominent: sweet and piquant with an almost savory first impression that reminds me of pickled peruvian pearls, but the taste is so brightly and sweetly watermelon and feels like it pole-vaults into your mouth, skipping 60% of your tongue and landing flawlessly at the back of the palate. Oolong is the supportive introverted friend tip-toeing in behind it and softly closing the door behind them.

This morning I was truly feeling the effects of being at the center of a nightmare drum circle of depression, insomnia, the calamitous state of my current work environment, and the exhausting reality that they are not nearly as inclusive as they think they are. A mental health intermission called for a new tea.

This oolong is an interesting mix of floral and vegetal. The perfumey collard liquor aroma gives way to a palate somewhere in between. Warm and faintly wilted-tasting without being too brothy or peppery, this is a mellow and soothing mix with a remote impression of something I want to call pine nuts but can’t swear to it.

This is what you get when you extract all the evil spirits from a honeydew and make a tea with what remains.

My distractable brain decided I needed to simultaneously prepare one of every beverage option I possess today. Consequently, I didn’t get to taste much of this tea while it was still hot, but hours later, it is tasty and refreshing even if a bit chilly.

Admittedly, I am not much of a dragonfruit aficionado. The flavor is not evasive so much as unfamiliar but feels like it is fairly well matched to the rose in terms of intensity: neither seems to overshadow the other significantly. The pairing completes a crisp, zingy fruit taste that my uneducated palate would have probably labeled as nectarine.

Having just survived 5 hours of flight delays and a solid 1-2 more spent waiting to deplane, I have settled back in to my apartment from a July 4th trip to Chicago enough to investigate my treasures. Chicago is home to many wonders, but I found its strengths lie more in tea services and tearooms than in bulk shops. Though I regret that I did not have a chance to stop in to the Smashing Pumpkins-owned tearoom nor to visit the Russian Teatime restaurant to enjoy a samovar, I did get to swing by The Coffee and Tea Exchange and load my cargo pants pockets with samples like some sort of strangely gaited packhorse. And, in my typical fashion, I will test the waters with my least anticipated acquisition.

Ok. Well. The vision was to steep this for 3 minutes. Foolishly I responded to the call of nature right before the timer went off, and as we all know, nature loves to yap. So really we’re looking at a solid 6-7 minutes. Luckily this doesn’t seem to have been catastrophic for this tea. From the aroma I get a sweet, lemon-bar character of citrus on a muddled, mixed-berry bed. Tartly accented but not sour, this is a pretty balanced and fruity cup that sidesteps the raw aggression of an assertive lemonade. I think this tea could just as easily be billed as a “Fruit Tart” blend or a Berry Lemon Bar reflective of the warm and sugared fruit notes that impart a baked, jammy character to it that I just don’t anticipate from “Raspberry Lemonade”.

Thanks to a mild case of jet lag exacerbated by Billie Eilish’s impeccable new album that robbed me of valuable sleep during my flights this morning, I am doing exactly what I intended not to do: cracking into yet another sample from my vacation loot, perhaps the most eagerly anticipated. Oh, lord it is worth it.

Almond Sugar Cookie commands my attention with such authority that I paused my music to focus on it. First and foremost, this decadent treat presents sugared almonds and vanilla in exactly the proportions you would taste digging into a sinful batch of – you guessed it – almond flavored sugar cookie dough. And it is specifically dough, because Cameron B’s description of “creamy” couldn’t be more accurately stated – the flavors come sliding in carried by a gentle, buttery sea. But I can’t stop there, because with it comes a nostalgic element that took me a minute to nail down:

Ice cream parlor.

The balance of flavors here perfectly collude to impersonate that plush creamery atmosphere, an incredible replication of the exact complicity that occurs between the sugary waffle cones and liberal scoops of cookies and cream flavor ice cream. Almonds, sugar, butter, batter, crushed Oreos, vanilla, and even milk comprise the flavor polycule of my dreams in this spectacularly crafted cup.

I need a Lactaid after writing this.