Kaylee Send Message

Night 2 of Hanukkah, and the second blend arbitrarily chosen from Plum Deluxe’s Hanukkah sampler. I took the day off work to spend time with family. The day went much better than I expected, so I’m taking the win. I also had a truly wonderful time visiting the Walt Whitman Birthplace Museum. It’s small but charming and I had a lot of fun learning from our tour guide!
By the time I got home, I just wanted something cozy to drink. This fits the bill! It’s got that almost alcoholic almond flavor taking up most of the sip, with the verbena sort of layering on top just to brighten things up a bit. The woodiness of the rooibos complements the nuttiness well. If it wasn’t for the twinge of an alcohol note, I’d like this even better. Possibly that might fade if the dry leaf had more time to mellow, but by the time I figured that out I had already made all of it.

Happy Hanukkah! I do adventaggedon because it’s fun, and it’s a community thing, and it’s a great way to try out lots of new teas and companies in a fairly short period of time. But I’m very aware that it is, at best, a borrowed tradition – like wearing your friend’s clothes. Having Hanukkah teas and Hanukkah-specific samplers is like wearing my own. I went for Plum Deluxe’s Hanukkah sampler again this year, but this time I opted for the fully caffeine-free option. There are four regular blends in here and four unique to the box. They’re not numbered the way advent calendar teas are; more of a choose-your-own-adventure. So I chose one that I’m hoping will help me digest the latkes I ate tonight after a big Christmas meal earlier today!
Good chunks of ginger in the dry leaf translate into a lovely ginger bite at the front of the sip that lingers afterwards. Sweet, tangy fruit notes dance around the ginger. I actually had to double check the ingredients for hibiscus because it reminded me of the flavor made by whole hibiscus flowers, which I think is generally sweeter than cut-up hibiscus. No hibi here though! Just the sweet-tartness of the strawberry playing tricks on me.

This is technically the next day in most time zones, but wishing everyone a merry Christmas/hope you had a merry Christmas!

We did Christmas with my partner’s family and then Hanukkah at home. It’s been a long day and I’m just now getting around to tasting notes. I knew Christmas was going to be a big and heavy meal, so I chose this blend from this year’s 52teas advent calendar as my take-along tea. I hoped that the tart fruity flavors and the slight briskness of the base tea would cut the heavy meal a bit, and they did! mission accomplished.

Day 11 of the 52teas advent calendar. I’ve been stuck in bed with a migraine all day. Definitely not going to be able to get through all my tasting notes. Luckily I don’t need to say much about this one because I’ve reviewed it before. Loved it as much today as I have in the past. Glad it made it into this year’s calendar!

Day 21 of the Lupicia advent calendar. Five sachets of this one! Plus it’s an herbal, which means I’ll likely get through it pretty quickly. More than anything this makes me think of churchkhela. This makes no sense because there’s no grape or nuts in here! Maybe it’s the texture or the exact degree of sweetness? If I really focus my palate and actively tell it to ignore the association, I can tell that peach and mandarin orange are the two dominant notes in my cup. In this case, though, I don’t really want to do that! First of all because it’s pretty hard, and second because I’m enjoying it exactly as it is so why torture myself in order to get less pleasure from the cup in the interest of having a more accurate tasting experience while sitting around watching Star Trek?

Day 10 of 52teas advent calendar. I had this while working today so admittedly wasn’t able to give it my full attention. The tangerine/citrus seemed to pop more when it cooled. The base is a bit brisk and tannic, but in a way that serves to temper what I agree is best described as “marshmallow frosting” flavor. It’s got that fluffy marshmallow quality but also that particular sweetness and almost texture of frosting. It did mess with my stomach a little but not too badly (and not at all a reflection of the quality of the tea, it’s my own body’s sensitivity).

Day 9 of the 52teas advent calendar. Such a cozy fall/winter tea. I love this maple flavor. I find the pear soft and mellow. The base is great for this – sweet and slightly nutty. I can’t decide whether this would take oat milk well or the oat milk would drown out the flavors, but I don’t really feel like standing up to go get oat milk.

Day 22 of Plum Deluxe herbal advent calendar. Yup, this tastes like pomegranate and sugar! I get a kick out of there being a whole dehydrated cranberry in my sample. That’s probably not the best way to extract flavor but it is very visually pleasing (not to mention satisfying to watch it plump up). It’s good cold. I liked it even better when it was hot, though. Sort of a hot apple cider or hot toddy vibe, but with pomegranate as the base flavor.

Day 22 of the Tea Thoughts winter countdown box. A big chunk of today was spent browsing the mall for gifts because we’re very behind on holiday prep. Nothing seemed quite right so it took a while to find gifts we were happy with. We did find a Pokemon decked out for winter for our nephew, which is probably the most exciting thing we brought home. I had a couple Western-style mugs of this oolong before we left. I remember some minerality and roastiness but not much else. I’ll have to try this out with a gong fu brew.