Santa's Little Helper

A mint tea that I like! Woot Woot! I tend to get overpowered by mint very easily in teas, but I found a winner. This has a great rich dark chocolate flavor, a smooth mint flavor, and just a hint of the puerh base. I’ve resteeped it several times and the flavor stays nice and strong. Glad I snatched it up before it was gone.

The combination of black tea, chocolate and peppermint is nothing new, I’ve actually had two other similar teas today. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about the combination at all, it is in fact one of my favorite holiday combinations, but it does get a little boring from time to time. What makes this blend truly stand out is the addition of the pu’erh base, it adds a significantly different flavor to what would have been just another peppermint black tea. In the past, I’ve often described pu’erh as fishy tasting, but here it reminds me more of the forest just after a heavy rain, dark and earthy. There is a rich flavor from the chocolate that pairs incredibly well with the more earthy flavors from the pu’erh. On top of it all are the bright, sharp flavors of the peppermint and a slight sweetness from the festive candy cane and Christmas tree sprinkles. Art of Tea has done a wonderful job of taking a classic combination of holiday flavors and adding a twist to it.

You can check out my full review on my blog:
http://www.notstarvingyet.com/index/2013/12/24/tuesday-tea-santas-little-helper-art-of-tea.html

I’m excited to try this one, even though it’s a minty tea. I typically don’t like mint in tea at all, but there are those rare moments when I do like a cup. The Christmas tree and candy cane sprinkles are so cute and the blend smells very creamy and minty! Once water has been added, I still get some sweet mint, but it’s sort of masked by what I can only describe as a grassy pen in the zoo. It’s definitely the puerh. Ugh, I wish that puerh and I got along better, but sometimes… it’s just impossible.

Sipping… primary note is the mint which lingers on the tongue and then changes into the black tea base. I enjoy Art of Tea’s black teas – malty, a little bit creamy and dark. The finish of this tea is of the puerh and it’s earthy, stinky & fishy. I think that I would like this cup so much more if the puerh were put on a spaceship and sent to the moon. The mint is rather tame, soft & works so well with the black tea. A real shame that I don’t enjoy this cup a bit more.

Thanks so much to TastyBrew for a sample! I’m glad that I tried it before dashing off to buy a bunch.

Happy Holidays everyone! I love this pretty holiday tea. The candy pieces are so cute and the flavors are great.

Read the whole review here: http://www.teareviewblog.com/?p=19539

Another Christmas-y blend I felt I needed to work on finishing off, so I made it in my timolino for work. I received it back around January as an extra sample from someone’s tea sale: I believe Queenoftarts? I could be wrong though.

I actually thought it was just black tea up until the hot water hit the leaf – and then I was able to immediately smell the Pu’Erh. Of course looking it up now to log it, it does have Pu’Erh in it. Visually I couldn’t tell from the leaf though.

Taste wise I was a little let down but also simultaneously pleasantly surprised. The let down was the the mint was really faint – pretty much only just present enough to realize it was there; and I was expecting more. But maybe moderation was a good thing: the chocolate/vanilla combo was tasty and meshed surprisingly well with the Pu’Erh which was very strong and earthy in a really good way.

At first I thought I was unimpressed with this blend but by the time I was at the bottom of the timolino I was so heartbroken I was out! I have one more cup worth left though; so I’m excited for that to see if it’s consistently good. It’s summer(ish) now so I wouldn’t think about restocking at the moment but I could get behind having more of this back in the winter!

This is basically a dessert as a tea, it’s that good. It’s black tea + mint + chocolate. So delicious!