Mulled Wine

Again, first time I tried this one it was well overleafed. I’m trying again in the hopes that I like it better now. Which it seems I do.

This one almost smells like bubblegum to me. I’m kind of confused by this one, but that’s okay. It almost reminds me of Bubbie’s Backlava from last year. It’s sweet and fruity but with some spice. It’s pretty good! I definitely like this one better now. But it tastes really like bubblegum to me. I don’t know why… haha oh well!

Bubble gum, seriously that is what this tastes like to me, mild bubble gum. I was expecting a wine taste and I kinda get it, but I still think bubble gum.

I had a sample of this in my last order, and while I would consider this tea inoffensive, it’s not my thing. The leaves smelled similar to mulled cider, but the tea had a hint of a perfume taste and not much else once brewed which somewhat reminded me of my least favorite offerings from Celestial Seasonings. Perhaps this tea is better if you have a greater tea per water ratio. I made it in an 8 ounce mug rather than a small teacup.

I only picked up two of the Winter Teas from DAVIDsTEA as initially there were only two that interested me: this one and Hot Chocolate. I’m kind of starting to regret not grabbing Cardamom French Toast since all of the reviews have been so positive. My mom got the entire collection though, so maybe I’ll steal a cup from her. She seems to like it enough to stock up, anyway…

There’s something so appealing about the smell of this blend though: it reminds me of Sangria quite a lot but without that licorice root sweetness. The intensity of the fruity flavours and juiciness of the citrus though! That carries over well, but with a bubblegum like sweetness. My first taste was hot: and it was really wonderful!

I’ve been having a stressful time with my laptop the last few days – I keep getting hard disk/drive failure warnings every ten minutes or so and my laptop is definitely showing signs that it is indeed failing. It’ll unexpectedly crash, things are taking ages to load, and so many other concerning things. I literally just replaced the hard drive about a year and a half ago after it suddenly, and without warning, just failed. One night I shut Aurthour (my laptop) down for the night and the next morning he wouldn’t boot up. I’m terrified that will happen again. However, at least this time I’ve gotten a heads up and been able to back up all of my important files (which I hadn’t last time – I lost SO MUCH information). I’m hoping I can get into a repair shop by the end of the week and will be able to repair the hard drive before it fails so I don’t have to rely on a backup. Aurthour just has to hold out that long…

Anyway, all of that is just to say that when I brewed up this cup I was sitting frantic on my bed desperately backing up files. Had I not had such a fruity, sweet cuppa to sip on my nerves would have been absolutely fried and I would have been in a much greater state of panic. Instead I managed to divert the energy that would have been spent stressing out on focusing on the flavour notes: bubble gum, orange, ginger, clove, apple. Sweet, effervescent flavour grounded with soft spices. Yum yum.

A bit spicy, citrusy, and sweet. I definitely get a wine scent and a slight wine flavor from this, with a hint of… wait for it… bubble gum?! I dunno, maybe I’m super weird but at times I swear it’s there! Can’t really taste the oolong. but overall I like this one, it’s quite tasty both hot and cold.

Day #6 of tea!

I’m not changing my rating on this one, and the only thing I’m going to add is that I steeped this one for longer and with more leaves this time, and I liked the taste much better. :)

Wine has never really been my thing, so I was going to make a point of avoiding this one (particularly as the last tea I had that reminded me of wine (Elderflower Spritz) was far from being my favourite). However, the dry leave of this one smells amazing, so I had to give it a go.

Really glad a did. While this does have a bit of a spiced, warm, sangria vibe, it still fails to really remind me of wine. It’s more just Christmas time by a fire with your family or a good book (which is obviously a good way to describe a taste). Overall, it’s predominantly cinnamon and orange, but if that’s how somebody described it to me, I wouldn’t be sold. It’s both light and heavy at the same time. I’m kind of not sure how to describe it. It’s a Christmas tea; I don’t think I’d want to drink it any other time except November or December, but it’s a very good Christmas tea.

A note on the oolong base: It’s not really there. If your after this because it’s an oolong, buy a different tea.

My husband is feeling sick today, and asked me to make him a cup of tea. He wanted something with a lot of cinnamon, so I brewed him up some h and s hot cinnamon spice, and he loved it.

For myself, I chose this one. The dry leaf in-store kind of smells the way I imagine a rich person’s living room at Christmas to smell. Spicy, sweet, and of high class. When I opened up the bag I brought home though, there was more of a candied, bubble-gum type of sweetness that made me do a bit of a double-take. I brewed it up for about six minutes, and found the taste to be heavily spice-dominat, still with the sweet orange taste. The orange in this tea kind of reminds me of the orange smell/flavour in a mid summer night’s dream, so that was kind of distracting, because it felt a bit at odds with the rest of the taste. Also, it felt as though there was a bit too much ginger and cloves, and I think a bit of sugar might have calmed that down some, although by the time I realized that, I was mostly done the cup. Maybe next time. The oolong base, which I was actually curious about and looking forward to, was virtually undetectable, which is too bad. This might as well have been an herbal. All in all, it was alright, although I’m not thinking i’ll need to get more at this point.

Dry leaf: Sweet orange spice notes with mild wine aromas.

Liqueur: Burnt orange color. Spiced wine aroma.

Flavour: Mild orange zest and spice notes. Sweet wine finish.