Magic Butterfly

Day 1 of the Plum Deluxe herbal advent calendar. I enjoyed this advent so much last year that I’m doing it again. They’ve upped their game aesthetically this year, using higher quality individual envelopes for each day and a very pretty tin for the whole thing. Unfortunately they’re still using the plastic bags that drove me nuts last year because leaf would get stuck in them so frequently; maybe I’ll get lucky and they will be less staticky this year.
This year’s advent is off to a somewhat unremarkable start. The blend has a lot of butterfly pea flower, which I’m not generally fond of as a gimmick unless it’s making a lemonade blend/actual lemonade turn purple. Hot, this blend mostly tastes like hibiscus, backed by a sort of generic tart berry note. It’s more interesting when it cools, when the hibiscus tones down a bit and strawberry and apple notes become clearer and more prominent. I finished this off easily enough but I wouldn’t necessarily seek it out. And I still have high hopes for the rest of the month!

So good iced!

Finishing this advent sample from AJRimmer. I think it was one of Roswell Strange’s tasting notes that mentioned steeping a tea in milk and I decided to try it with this. I had some vanilla flax milk that I cold steeped this in overnight. I can’t tell you how excited I am to be drinking blue milk right now… JUST LIKE THEY DO ON TATOOINE!!! I can’t stop smiling as I look into my cup. Geek amusement aside, it tastes better than it did the other day. I still get a little of the pea flavor, but it seems somehow muted by the milk and there are fruity flavors in there now too. Some sort of earthy berry flavor? If I sip too quickly and don’t pace myself the flavors build up in an almost soapy way, so slow and steady with this one. Which is hard because it’s blue milk!

This has that same herbaceousness I’ve come to expect from butterfly pea flower. Most of the flavor is dominated by some light fruitiness combined with the slightly unpleasant butterfly pea. It’s okay, but not better than other teas of this variety. Most of the blend was flowers, and it could have been much more balanced. I wish it were just a little flower for the color while focusing more on the fruit flavor. The main fruit I taste is lemon.