Merry Cranberry

Urgh. Last tea sipdown for the evening (very early morning??) I can feel my bladder protesting strongly already… (Protesting me even sampling this tea, not this being my last one for the evening!)

I had forgotten that this tea was less like Ever Green and more like… I dunno, ickiness, until I opened the bag. And then, I smelled spices and cinnamon which made my nose wrinkle. And then I read momo’s tasting note and remembered the anise. Nuts. Oh well, at least this will be the last cup I’ll have of it! (Well, maybe I will re-steep…)

The aroma is clovey vanilla-licorice….. bleh. The flavour, thankfully, is not quite so heavy on cloves, focusing more on cinnamon and anise, which actually isn’t too bad. I can’t really distinguish the cranberries here, though, even though I’m pretty sure there was at least one in the infuser. It also does taste kind of creamy, and I don’t think I noticed this before, but something in here has a bit of peppery spiciness! Like, a touch of cayenne or something, biting at the back of my throat after sipping. It’s possible that it could be cinnamon or something, I suppose.

Anyhow, this actually isn’t all that bad. My rating seems to indicate that I thought the same last time I drank it as well. Certainly nothing I’d seek out again, but I have certainly had worse. Classic DT though – you would never know that this was a green tea and not a herbal…

Jeez, this one has star anise too? Not as obvious as Ceylon Star but I think DavidsTea has a new favorite ingredient hahaha.

This one seems heavy too, I got an ounce of it but I don’t think it’s going to make much at all.

This is very, very Christmas to me! First and foremost, the flavor is cranberry with spice notes. Then the mistletoe adds a unique almost spruce-y type flavor. Not too strongly, but just enough that it reminds me a bit of a Christmas tree.

I completely forgot this is a green tea because it really seems more like an herbal. I do like it though. It’s sweet and spicy, with just a hint of earthiness.

I like it!

The dry mix is so heavy with fruit, which makes for one expensive tea. I used my entire 20 gram sample to make this cup, and being the frugalista that I am, this already starts me off on the wrong foot.

As for the taste, there is a mild tartness, as one would expect with cranberries, but it’s not translating quite right at the end of the sip. It’s leaving a strange dry feeling on my tongue – it’s on the verge of a dry-sour-almost chalky taste that I don’t enjoy. To make matters even worse, this doesn’t re-steep well.

Oh man…There is something in this that is not agreeing with my tummy :(

The idea of this tea is so fun and unique, and I love that it has mistletoe in it – so festive! It’s not a bad tea, it just isn’t well-suited to me. Between that and the price, I have no plans to buy it again.

This reminds me of licorice jellybeans because it has a real sweetness to it, and the anise is the most attention-grabbing flavour (and then light cinnamon)… perfect after-dinner tea. The only thing that bothers me is that it’s really hard to measure it out or judge how much to use because it’s such huge chunks of things.

I had an existential tea crisis yesterday. I was looking for a specific blend (that I can’t even remember now) and I searched through all 3 very large shelves I have for tea, along with the smaller compartments they’ve taken over… and then my 2 huge baskets of sample. And I realized. I have too much tea! So I ran around like a chicken with my head cut off fluttering over what to do about it. Sell big sample envelopes? But I dug through my samples and could hardly bare to part with any because I still want to try them. Ugh! So I stuffed a swap envelope I was preparing extra-full to make myself feel better and went to the post office in a tizzy. Tea is taking over my life! What shall I do! And then I came home to a package form tattooed_tea and quickly my worries were forgotten because hey, new tea to try! Of course this only compounds my problem but it’s hard to beat the new-tea rush (even when it’s only samples!)

I decided to try this first because I love Christmas. I find it a relaxing time of the year (usually… not in 2012 orz) and hoped a big cup of Christmas cheer would calm me down a little! I have floating anxiety that tends to “latch on” to every little problem and make it seem way bigger than it is. So really, the “too much tea” thing probably seems really silly but for a hour or so it filled me with so much anxiety I felt like I was going to burst at the seams with worry.

Ahh, this was just what I needed! It smells like, well, Christmas. Cinnamon, star anise, allspice, cranberry. And while there doesn’t seem to be much green tea when it’s dried it blows up and totally filled up my steeper. Or maybe that’s the mistletoe? Regardless this is a wonderful blend and quite different from other Christmas blends that I’ve tried which usually come down to cinnamon, orange and clove. The tastes here are surprisingly complex and I am loving the tartness the cranberry adds! The one downside is how darn heavy this blend is, it would be expensive to keep stocked round the year!

This has the most amazing fruity spice smell, ever. I know it says the liquor is golden green but I was really expecting it to turn red with the amount of cranberries I see in the blend. In this serving I got a gigantic piece of cinnamon the size of the top digit of my thumb- so as huge as a mountain, everyone!I didn’t read the ingredients carefully so it was a surprise to get a licorice scent from the liquid- from the anise.

Drinking it, I’m mainly picking up spicy sweet and something leafy that I can’t place. This is different. I thought it tasted alcoholic at first but it’s just the anise/licorice association. The cranberry-apple sweet notes and this leafy-ness come out more as it goes from hot to warm and reminds me of the Cranberry Pear tea. The anise has a nice sweet component too and I can handle it a lot better than fennel. Tangy sweet aftertaste with cinnamon prevailing throughout… that’s what I get for dumping a jumbo cinnamon stick in! Texture: somewhat oily (safflower) and tingling on lower cheek walls.

This is, without a doubt, a little taste of Christmas and I don’t think I would enjoy it as much out of season. It’s perfect for right now though and making me very excited for the upcoming holiday. Apparently there are mistletoe and green tea leaves in this? I don’t know what mistletoe leaves tastes like but you could have fooled me with the tea.

We ordered 250g of this during one of their web specials, and I was a little shocked at how heavy it was… and how little tea you actually get at that weight. There was more than double the amount of the other tea, and this one looks a lot more like a very dried fruit-heavy trail mix.

This wasn’t my first attempt making this tea, but I guess I just forgot to write a tasting note for it… maybe that’s because we attempted to make iced tea with it, and it turned out more like fruit juice. The first time I made it, the flavors were too light, so I over-compensated. I tried to find a better balance this time:

Teaware: 16oz travel mug
Measured dry: 3-1/2tsp
Temperature: 200º F
Steeping Time: 4min
Additives 4tsp raw sugar

The flavor is still a bit light, but I think this is the best so far. The cranberry has developed a much richer flavor than the first time I made it, and some of the additional notes are sounding off.

Oh, no. I forgot to check this one for apple.

I thought I had gone through them all!

Well, I’m off to go find some Benadryl. I think my husband is going to have to enjoy the rest of this one. Stupid allergies.

Update: Okay, found the Benadryl. Now that I think about it, the apple was a pretty strong undertone to the cranberry in the overall flavor. The cinnamon and anise notes were more understated, but unlike my previous attempts at making this tea, they were a lot better with this preparation. I couldn’t taste the green tea at all, but I’m not surprised by that much. Some of the DAVIDsTEA and Teavana blends are so heavy on the blend-ins that they lose touch with the base, and that is unquestioningly the case here.

Dry Leaf Nose: Sweet with cranberry, apple and cinnamon notes.

Liquor: Golden green and clear.

Flavour: Sweet cranberries are prominent. The cup is complex and fruity, with cinnamon and anise in the background.

This may be the green tea I’ve been waiting for my whole life. I was fearful it would be all cranberry and cinnamon and no tea but there is a lovely astringency to it and the green tea flavour is lovely. I don’t know if it’s the cinnamon or the mistletoe or what but this tea is just so amazingly warm and lovely. I am always pleasantly surprised by cranberries, they add such a lovely warmth and sweetness to tea.

I had to make my weekly trip to DT a little early this time in order to get my hands on an advent calendar (which I did! Yay!) So I decided to take this as a cup to go. The man that helped me told me that is was like Elf Help, but spicier, this didn’t help me because I never tried Elf Help.
It found it to be very sweet and fruity. Too sweet and fruity actually. My stomach hurt afterward. But, one of the DT staff wrote this on my cup!
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