Eggnog Pound Cake

Mmm so glad I finally tried this company.
This tea is delicious. Ya’ll know I love white tea. The base is creamy and dreamy.
Sweet, but not overly so or fake sugar tasting. The eggy flavour is there with just a hint of nutmeg and cinnamon. The spices could have been a tad bit stronger in my opinion but overall, a very good tea.
The resteep at 5 minutes was just as lovely as the first.

SO! I (still) have so much tea that I could probably use it to insulate a house, which means that I have been on a tea-buying hiatus, for the most part, aside from a few little things here and there – for the last year or more. I’ve been dutifully (and with pleasure) chugging my way through my current stash, and kind of mentally wishlisting teas or companies I’d like to buy from in the future. AQTT was on that list for awhile. So on Black Friday i was like eff it, i’m doing it, and I went a little crazy (considering the crappy Canadian exchange rate), but no regrets! THEN while I was waiting for my order to ship I found out I was one of two Canadian winners of 6 oz of AQTT! I mean talk about excitement. SO MUCH.

Yesterday the tea arrived! Of course I have a tracking app on my phone for my multitudes of online orders, and I was checking it ALL DAY, I even went home for lunch to see if it was there. If we’re being honest I was trying to get to it before the end of the day when my husband would be with me, because EVEN THOUGH I’ve not bought tea in forever, it’s still the time of the year where I should be spending money on others and being restrained with my own purchases. HAHAHAHAH. Yeah. And of COURSE it wasn’t there at lunch but when I got home and saw it in the mailbox I’m sure my eyes were twinkling with little sparkles of pure joy. No exaggeration, bubble mailer JAMMED full of tea – bigger than my head, hard to justify that one away BUT since I had won the contest who can argue with free tea?! Not even my frugal & budgety husband! (I tease, he’s great and always TCB)

I opened that thing up like it was Christmas morning and I was tearing into some kind of fly new Barbie toy from Santa. The mailperson was Santa yesterday. Or AQTT was Santa.

You’re probably wondering about this tea……..

I ended up adding a second ounce to my order once I won the contest, because I had high hopes for this and I freakin love eggnog AND one of my all time favourite teas would be the Creamy Eggnog tea from Butiki (a single teardrop just rolled down my cheek)… I have been hoarding that one but I DO realize it won’t last forever.

Anyway this was the first one I cracked open to sniff last night, and the first one I brewed up. AQTT stands on its own and I don’t mean to just compare this company to Butiki, but I have to stress that once I got sick of most flavoured teas for their weird chemicalness and the fact that most of them didn’t seem to use particularly good tea leaves in their blends… Butiki remained as the shining example that all other flavoured teas had to live up to. I had heard good things about AQTT but with the shipping costs and exchange rate it was something I couldn’t justify until now….. SO GLAD I DID

This tea is creamy, and soft, and eggy, and has the perfect subtle blend of eggnog spices, and is VERY similar to Creamy Eggnog in terms of flavoring. I love the white tea used as well, makes the flavours stand out, as you might normally expect a black tea to be used.

To summarize, this tea was a big bunch of YESYESYESYESYES for me.

I cannot wait to try the rest of my massive head sized AQTT ordered teas :)

Hey, listen. I’m only two teas into A Quarter to Tea so far but really… Impressive is the word I’m going to use. I was on the verge of dismissing almost all flavored teas but this company/person has revived my belief that there are good flavored teas to be had.

The dry leaf certainly smells pretty spot on with the name of the tea. There is a slight artificial edge underneath. Not enough to be off putting but it gave me pause. Not to worry. The flavor of the tea after it brewed really nails it.

I did gong fu style which I’m sure I wasn’t supposed to with this tea but yeah I do what I want haha. The scent that wafts up from the brewing liquor is pretty amazing. I served some to my mom and wife and they both took notice to how good it smelled from the cup. There is a certain cinnamon taste in the first two or three steeps. Not biting cinnamon but more like a creamy vanilla cinnamon.

What is even more impressive about this tea is that I am on steep 5 (6?) at about 1 minute and the leaves and the liquid both still hold that delicious vanilla cream cinnamon scent. The flavor is only slightly diminished but is still really, really tasty.

This is an exceptional flavored tea.

It’s not often that a blend hits so close to what was intended for it. Often, I find that names do more to disappoint the drinker than describe the flavor of the blend. Why is that? Does the blender start with a name and stick with it, or do they actually name the tea once they have tasted it?

Anyway, this blend hit rather close to its name, but not quite…for me at least. The base was sweet and creamy, combining well with the buttery vanilla flavors. It actually tasted like a poundcake, which was awesome. There may be a bit of egginess, but rather than contributing to an eggnog flavor, it lends itself further to the cake flavor of the tea. There’s a hint of artificiality to it, but it’s well within tolerable parameters for me.

I didn’t really catch any of the eggnog. It might be because of the age of tea, but I didn’t catch any of the nutmeg and cinnamon notes. Since I’m not really a fan of eggnog, that’s okay with me.

I may have to get more of this.

Okay, I might need more of this. It is one of the best white blends that I’ve ever tried. It is creamy, light, sweet, but warming with a really nice hint of cinnamon at the end. I’ve actually been looking for a white tea like this and holy crap. This would be my ideal dessert. Steep one and two are awesome…I really don’t want it to fade in steep three…

Enough overpraising. This doesn’t taste exactly like Eggnog, but it is pretty similar in the type of creamy and slightly spiced profile. The pound cake element is a little bit stronger since the white tea does have an odd buttered texture. It still feels light on the tongue, but thick enough to coat it with a thin gloss. It’s like the lingering after taste of a pound cake, really.

For who it might be for, I would definitely recommend it to those looking for a creamier, or sweeter light tea. Some might think it’s way too light or weak, while others might think it’s too vanilla-y. There’s also a bit of a sugariness that would be up for debate on whether or not it’s more natural tasting or more artificial. I brewed it lighter, so it was more natural for me.

It’s one of my favorites that Lauren has made. In fact, I would recommend her lighter, creamier teas because she really kicks butt with them.

Next to Banana Nut Pancakes, this is my favorite tea I received in my recent AQTT order! The white tea base is light and sweet and blends perfectly with the rich cakey flavor of the tea. The eggnog flavor is spot-on and the cake notes are definitely present as well. Lovely!

I am really enjoying this tonight. The flavor is pretty spot on. A little cakey a little egg nog like and yet since it is a white tea it is no in your face with the base tea it is light and nice and still very comforting.

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been buying alot of tea. My mother is on a long vacation and since she is…less then enthusiastic about my tea addiction, this is an ample opportunity to buy as much as I can. So far, I’ve bought 9 teas from David’s Tea, (And planning on buying more in March.) Lupicia’s happy bag of which there were 9 teas, will be getting Kusmi’s Essential Teas set (Bought the set from Amazon, because I was having trouble with buying from Kusmi’s site. And lastly planning on buying samples from Fusion along with an ounce or 2 of teas I know I love.

But anyways, while drinking this tea is not like drinking a cup of eggnog…its still an tasty and interesting cup.

I ordered 2 7 teas sample packs and 1 3 tea sample pack, and completely by mistake put 8 teas down on the comments when I ordered, so they were nice enough to include this tea as 1 cup sample. I wasn’t planning on ordering again from Quarter to Tea till at least this summer, but I might be inclined to buy again, particularily this tea.

It has a very faint soft minty taste that eggnog has, but more of a eggy-cakey taste that others mentioned.

This tea is very good cooled down, but I get the feeling that it wouldn’t taste all that great cold. But I could be wrong.

Yummy! Spot on cake/eggy flavor. Didn’t really pick up any nutmeg or cinnamon notes. But either way the tea is quite a yummy treat.

Sipdown (150)

Again I didn’t get a chance to drink this until it cooled as I got caught up cooking dinner. Now, as I wait for the turkey breast to finish cooking, I am happily sipping away at this tea.

One thing I noticed is that the white base used provides a nice foundation of sweetness/creaminess that supports these decadent dessert flavors wonderfully. I don’t notice eggnog instantly as their is more of a cake flavor throughout the sip but right at the end, there the eggnog/nutmeg deliciousness. It’s quite nice though I do wish the eggnog was a bit stronger as the flavorings in this are subtle. It is worth a try but I think I prefer the Banana Split if I were to choose a white tea.