White Christmas

Sipdown (615)!

I’m not really ready for Christmas teas yet, but this was a very easy sipdown for me so I decided not to keep holding onto it and waiting for Christmas. It honestly smells amazing – very sweet and creamy with really strong, fresh notes of Spearmint. Sidebar; I think it’s hard for spearmint to not smell fresh – that’s just kind of part of the character of it as a type of mint!? This seemed especially fresh smelling to me, though. Steeped up, I found it a lot more tapered than the aroma was; though still definitely really distinctly spearmint flavoured. I thought that the body of the flavour was a little bit flat/dull with more of a muted spearmint/peppermint taste, notes of cocoa, and brisk black tea profile and not a lot of top notes to grab your attention. However, the finish is really divine; the body may be more dull but the finish is very creamy and silky. I could totally see how the marshmallow root in the blend was coming into play and leaving an impact on the flavour. Well worth the more boring body notes just to get to that enticing end of sip, which lingered delightfully.

I have recently come down with a bad cold- as luck would have it, I brought this in to the office to try, boy was it amazing! The mint was strong and somehow made my head feel clearer and sharper. The chocolate was a very nice balance to the mint and did not come off as watery and insubstantial as many chocolate teas do. The tea had a nice zing to it, and I have gone through my entire sampler of it- think I’m gonna have to buy a big bag of this….

Hurray for meeting tea friends! :)
Dexter and I met up for a wee walk around town and a cup of genmaicha and Thai tea ice cream. All kinds of deliciousness.

This is one of the teas that I had packed in my bag for the day.

I like this one a lot. Generally, I am not a fan of mint. I might even go so far as to say that mint scares me, so it took me months to get around to opening this. Pleasant surprise. The marshmallow and delicate chocolate soften up the mint. I will have no difficulty at all making my way through the small quantity that I have. I wish I had more of this on hand. It’s a lovely lift both at home and in my travel mug on the go.

Yay for a sipdown! Also boo for a sipdown of a really delicious spearmint/chocolate blend.

I made this last night, waited the recommended 10 minutes for it to cool and then my family decided we were going out for dinner. This sat overnight and I drank it cold this morning. Tbh the cold did it good because the peppermint was really crisp while the marshmallow added a fluffy sweetness.

Blech. I knew I wasn’t going to like this blend the minute I opened the bag. I detest mint in tea. I had one sip of this tea, cringed after reluctantly swallowing, and immediately passed the mug over to my mum. She doesn’t mind mint. She didn’t love it either, but she prefers the combination of mint and chocolate. After having my one sip I checked the ingredients and discovered that this blend contained peppermint leaves, spearmint leaves, AND wintergreen essence. For real?! Kill me now. No, don’t, that’s a tad bit dramatic. It was uber minty, y’know the type of mint that when you exhale your breath feels cold and your lips burn?? If that’s your jam, more power to you. It’d probably be nice as a latte with chocolate milk – again, if mint is your thing.

On the tenth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me… White Christmas Black Tea!

Check out the post on my blog: http://itstheteamonster.blogspot.com/2016/12/12-days-of-christmas-day-10.html

On the 10th Day of Christmas – I’m still amazed that it’s already the 10th day!

This was one of the more popular teas on the poll. I did take a few LiberTEAS with this blend and changed the recipe a little bit. First of all and probably the most obvious of changes is the change to the base since I’ve made it pretty clear that i’m using different sources for my teas. I used a blend of Fujian, Assam and Laoshan black teas to create the base of this blend. Second, I used essence of wintergreen rather than peppermint or spearmint because – I just happen to like wintergreen and hey, the word “wintergreen” seems to work with the idea of a “White Christmas” better, doesn’t it. OK, now I’m just making stuff up.

Third, for the minty leaves, I used more spearmint than peppermint. I personally prefer peppermint – I like that zingy flavor of the peppermint! – but for this particular blend, I wanted the softer, smoother flavor of the spearmint rather than the invigorating zing from the peppermint so that the black teas in the base – particularly the hint of cacao flavor in those black teas – to be noticed and not overwhelmed by the peppermint.

I think that the marshmallow root works better with spearmint than peppermint for the same reasons that I mentioned above. Peppermint is one of those herbs that can just dominate a tea so I wanted to go light on the peppermint so it wouldn’t throw off the balance of this blend and I think it worked.

I should point out that this post is from the queue, if you can’t work that out based on the references to NaNoWriMo, which takes place in November. This should also give you an idea of exactly HOW LONG the queue is.

This is WAAAAAY old! It’s actually the last tea from last year’s advent calendar. Not even the reblend that goes up for sale afterwards. The actual little envelope from the actual calendar. It’s been languishing for ages here in the box because I was under the mistaken impression that it was a green base, and I’ve just rarely felt like a green tea at all.

And then of course it started getting really old and I got a bit embarrased that I still hadn’t got around to it yet, so…

This is me, owning up. I still have this sample from the advent calendar of 2012.

Well, actually I don’t have it anymore as I’ve, at the time of posting this, drunk it. You know what I mean though.

I’ve been on holiday this week, but Husband haven’t. I always take a week’s holiday in November. Originally it was for the sake of NaNoWriMo, but I haven’t really been doing that this year. I didn’t really feel like it and didn’t have any ideas, so I’m going through a month now of chronic guilt, because this is the first time in I believe nearly 10 years where I haven’t even tried, so it’s sort of second nature to me by now that I ought to do it. Obviously not enough that I’m actually getting anything done, but even so.

Anyway, I’ve been on holiday, so I’ve really been making a crack at the box of things not yet tried and written about. All the words of fiction that I haven’t written? Yeah, those are now tea posts. My word doc of posts ready to, well, post is now 18 pages long and has 10+K words in it. At least two thirds of those were written this week.

Therefore, finally owning up to still not having drunk this sample.

The stupid thing is that I actually expect to rather like it.

It has a black base, which I like. It has marshmallow root, which I like. It has peppermint, which is something I’ve warmed to considerably in my tea over the last year or so.

I also remember that there was a sample in the advent calendar which was very similiar to this, only it had spearmint instead of peppermint, and I didn’t much like the spearmint. I theorised at the time that if it had been peppermint, I’d have enjoyed it a lot more. Or something to that effect. I can’t really recall what that tea was called, so I can’t go and look it up.

Anyway, this smells very peppermint-y, so at least we know age hasn’t deadened it completely. I can also pick up the marshmallow root under the mint, but it smells very much like those candy canes. Stripes and everything. But also, I’m afraid, a little bit like mouthwash. Base tea? Not so much, really.

Oh, peppermint. Lots of it. One sip and my mouth has gone all minty. Sweet too, again I can pick up the marshmallow root quite clearly. These two really work well together, totally creating the illusion of minty sweeties, and not at all mouthwash-y.

I can feel the base tea underneath that, but it’s really mostly there to provide some body for the other two flavours. I’m not sure exactly what the base is, but it seems to be very forgiving and none the worse for wear age.

Yes, this is indeed quite nice. Had I actually tried it at the proper time I’m not sure it would have been ’I’ll-risk-customs-fees!‘-nice, but I’m definitely enjoying this cup.

I believe the hypothesis RE spearmint versus peppermint is proven.