summer spiced plum

this was a guerilla delivery from the brilliant scribbles. ‘why guerilla?’ you say? ’isn’t that a large primate?’ well, change a letter and delete a letter and yes, but no, i do not refer to the excellent scribbles as an immensely broad shouldered jungle dweller… but refer instead to her uncanny ability combining timing and delivery. NO, i am no being redundant with ‘timing’ and ‘delivery’…. i mean instead that the arrival of her package today was excellent and a lovely surprise and played an unerring trump card, for as i struggled and grouched at a second failed steep of my ‘traditional plum pudding’ she provided me with a well behaved substitute!

this was my first della terra tea, and very nice it was. the smell of warm plums wafted towards me when i opened the baggie… ripe, but not over ripe (big difference). cinnamon, clove, ginger, cardamom? nicely smooth, an acceptable amount of acid given we are dealing with a fruit that contains a fair amount of acid. nicely balanced. tolerates cream without creating feta. a nice resolution to my steeping problem!

thank you for my lovely surprise!

This one doesn’t seem like a SUMMER tea to me… spicy plum? Sounds like the holidays to me! This blend actually has sugar in it, so it’s like sugared plums. Well, this blend should be plums but after a four minute steep with just boiled water, the plum is very slight but I LOVE the spices with the black tea base. It seems like it should be a chai but it’s different. And there is a bit of a fruity flavor that could be plum. It reminds me of a subtler version of 52Teas Iced Plum blend. But this one is so smooth and surprisingly very different and delicious. I hope they don’t just sell this blend in the summer… maybe the name can be changed be sugar plum fairy or something. (And no it is NOT like Della Terra’s dreaded Dirty Chai.)

I can’t believe I’m the first to log this! The pressure’s on… ;)

OK, first off, you should know, if you don’t already, I’m kind of a spiced-plum snob. I love spiced plum tea around Christmastime, either the blend I make myself or the Celestial Seasonings version. (And in that case I usually double-up the tea bags.)

So when I heard Della Terra Teas had a version for the summer, I had to have it! I had hoped to drink it iced, but opted for a hot cuppa today at work.

The flavor is more plum than spiced and is heavy on the hibiscus-tartness. It’s one of those teas in which it’s aroma and dry leaves smell amazing, but the brewed version tastes slightly different than what I was expecting. It’s decent and yummy, but more tart than I was hoping.

I’m going to try it iced and add a little sweetener to the infusion to see if that helps. Stay tuned…

I love spiced teas, but I don’t get to drink them very often because of my allergies. They always smell so good and remind me of the holidays. When I saw that Della Terra had released a summer spiced plum I knew I had to try it. Since the new fridge came in yesterday, bright and early at 7am, I was finally able to cold steep something and have it be really cold. I’m excited!

Anyway, I’m excited about this tea as well, when I opened up the package it smelled so good. I couldn’t really detect a plum scent, but all the spices sure were there. Once steeped I noticed something, my tea shimmered, not sparkled, but shimmered very faintly as the light hit it. It was very pretty, somewhat mesmerizing, and temporarily distracted me from tasting my tea.

The tea itself was very spicy and I didn’t notice a plum flavor to it, just a slight sweetness every once in awhile. This may be because I cold steeped it and the spices took over. I wish I had saved enough of this one to find out if it would taste any different hot, but I used the whole try me sized package for my cold steep. I thought this was a very yummy tea, but wish the plum would have stood out above the spices.

I bought this tea specifically to cold brew, although I will try it hot eventually. Just as soon as this heat wave lets up. It has been a brutally hot week.

As a cold brew this isn’t bad, but I didn’t get all the flavours that the name suggests. I tasted spice, so I felt like I was drinking a cold chai-type beverage, which was actaully pretty good. But, I didn’t taste any plum. Maybe it needs to hot brewed then iced to pull out the plum taste.

This tea did give me the idea to try some other tea’s that are spiced as a cold brew to see how that works out.

This is pretty much the sugar plum, but only more fruity. It has a nice fruit/ cinnamon scent. The flavour is nice too, since I do like plums. Perhaps I was supposed to have this iced.

I liked this one.. I found it a bit peppery for my liking so I added a couple of drops of vanilla agave… its wonderful.. its like a christmasy treat, but much much lighter! …. thanks scribbles

Thank you scribbles for sending me a sample of this tea.
I’m having a hard time wrapping my taste buds around this. I like the fruitiness of it, I like the spice combination, I’m just not sure I like them together. I think this would be a really nice plum fruit tea OR a really nice spice chai tea, I’m just not sure it can be both (or at least not in my world).
Thank you so much for sending this to me. As always really glad to have had the opportunity to sample it.

From the Here’s Hoping TTB.

This tea is not exactly what I was hoping for from it’s name. It is primarily a black tea with cinnamon. I taste nothing of the plum. The cinnamon does settle down after a bit but I still don’t sense any plum. But… cinnamon is supposed to be good for you, right? Not a bad tea and I’m glad I got to sample it but I won’t be buying it.