1145 Tasting Notes

50

Day 16 of the Plum Deluxe herbal advent. In sharp contrast to Day 15, Welsh Dreams, this blend feels very aggressive. The lemon peel, orange peel, and hibiscus give it a lot of tartness. I don’t like how that combines with the earthiness of the turmeric. It ends up just tasting like it has a coarse, harsh edge. I think I prefer turmeric in a sweet blend or a ginger blend. The citrus combo really isn’t working for me.

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85
drank Welsh Dreams Herbal by Plum Deluxe
1145 tasting notes

Day 15 of the Plum Deluxe herbal advent. This is similar to the Evening in the Garden blend, except this has mint where that one is floral. Everything in this is soft and gentle. Soft vanilla, gently tart lemon, a mint that lingers lightly on the palate. It’s not a weak blend, just a cozy one where the flavors all play together nicely.

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90

Got sick over the weekend and fell behind on my advents! Trying to catch up now. This is Day 2 of the 52teas advent calendar. I made it as an oat milk latte. The flavors are almost annoyingly well-balanced and on point. How dare you. I don’t even particularly like fig but the fig in this is so spot-on that I can’t deny it. And it works really well with the ginger and cinnamon. I could swear there’s a bit of clove in here but the ingredients don’t list it – maybe it’s one of the flavorings? I appreciate that this lands gingerbread, lands fig, and lands a good balance between the two to have a distinctive twist on a holiday classic.

 As an aside, the teas arrived packed in a Christmas-patterned box with a jingle bell attached. We couldn’t figure out what the sound was and were afraid that somehow there was broken glass inside the package! Thankfully there wasn’t, and now we know what that sound is!

gmathis

Oh, a jingle bell package! Hope I remember that next year when I send goodies to my grand-nephews!

52Teas

I love those big jingle bells – it’s become as much a thing for me as 12 Teas! I love bringing the boxes to the post office, with the bells jingling in their boxes. I get everyone’s attention as I’m toting the boxes into the post office. :)

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85
drank Cranberry Creme Black Tea by 52teas
1145 tasting notes

Day 1 of the 52teas advent calendar. Solid start and better than I expected! It’s a nice, soft creme with a gentle menthol sensation that lingers on the breath. So like cranberry-flavored soft peppermints but not terrible. The astringency of the base complements the tartness of the cranberry well, too.

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drank Latke Love by DAVIDsTEA
1145 tasting notes

This is a really hard flavor to land. As far as I know, Butiki is the only other company that has ever put out a latke blend. I appreciate the effort, care, and ambition that goes into doing a blend like this. And I wanted to make sure that I gave it full consideration so I’ve had it a few times now before finally sitting down to write up a note.

No doubt, this is a delicious blend. Apple, cinnamon, nutmeg, nice woody rooibos base. Big cozy fall vibes. But it’s apple-cinnamon pancake, not apple-cinnamon potato pancake. For one mug, I went out of my way to add extra bits of potato from the blend to see if that would help. That definitely upped the potato-starchy element, but it still leaned too sweet. I even tried adding salt, which used to work to bring out the savory aspects of Butiki’s blend, but didn’t seem to do much here. This is definitely a very DavidsTea take on the concept, which is to say that it skews sweeter than I’d ideally like it to be for a latke blend. I realize that most of DavidsTea’s market probably won’t be clamoring at the doors for a tea to be more savory, though, so this is just a matter of my preference.

Roswell Strange

Finding the right balance of potato for the blend was very tricky. Especially because “right” has soooo many meanings. You’re 100% spot on though with where and why we settled on the amount we did include.

Kaylee

That makes a lot of sense, and thanks for validating my read :) I’m also one of those people who doesn’t put toppings on my latkes at all, so my preferences would definitely skew more savory than the average bear. It occurred to me yesterday that it might be interesting to mix this with some hojicha though, so that’s going on the to-do list!

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Day 14 of the Plum Deluxe herbal advent calendar. The dry leaf smells almost cinnamon-y, but that disappears as soon as it brews up. Brewed, a clear cherry aroma wafts up. This smells and tastes like maraschino cherries with an almost marzipan element to it. With a shorter steep time, I got a little more of the plum flavor to come out, but that cherry stayed dominant no matter what I did.

ETA that this makes a wonderful tea soda!

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90

Day 8 of the Plum Deluxe Hanukkah sampler ending on a high note! This is probably more chocolate vanilla than chocolate marshmallow but that’s ok. It’s so tasty that I drank down an entire giant latte of it even though it literally made me sick (not the tea’s fault, I’m just sensitive to the base). Chocolate flavor extremely on point, not a whiff of alcohol to be had. The vanilla makes it extra wintry and cozy. A black tea base makes a lot of sense here because of its heft and slight maltiness. I don’t love the hint of astringency that it brings to the party though. So I went back and checked: there were indeed two options this year and I chose the caffeine sampler rather than the caffeine-free. Which explains why all 8 days were caffeinated blends! When there are only 8 days, I think I like a mixed sampler like they did last year better. Especially because FIVE were black teas, with 1 pu’erh and 2 greens. Next year I’ll just get the herbal if they do the two options again. Not a lot of places do Hanukkah samplers at all, so I appreciate that Plum Deluxe puts in the effort and they do have quite a few blends that I like.

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65
drank Morning Chai by Plum Deluxe
1145 tasting notes

Day 7 of the Plum Deluxe Hanukkah sampler. This is just a thoroughly middling chai. The clove is very prominent. There’s a hint of lemon. The base is weaker than I’d expect in a chai – both in color once steeped and in sturdiness relative to the spices. Once I added oat milk, it got even more washed out. I’m curious whether this is the same black tea base that they use for their other blends. I would assume so, but it tends to come off stronger in other blends. Possibly there are too many spices and not enough actual tea?

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Circling back to gong fu Day 9 of the Tea Thoughts Winter Countdown box, since I missed it. I really wish I was getting more out of this tea. I feel like I’m supposed to be. But I’m just not. It feels thick and rich with a pleasantly creamy note but beyond that ::shrug emoji:: Maybe I’ll have better luck with the other one on another day but it’s a bit of a bust today. Which is to say, this is enjoyable but doesn’t feel particularly distinctive today.

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86
drank Good Morning Moringa by Plum Deluxe
1145 tasting notes

Day 13 of the Plum Deluxe herbal advent calendar. I like this! I definitely mistook the yuzu for orange, though. Gotta work on that. At any rate, the yuzu-orange and the lemon go together nicely. Not sure what the moringa is bringing to the party but I’m not missing it. I’m more interested in the lingering lemongrass note, which is bright and fresh. Could easily drink through an ounce of this pretty quickly.

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she/her

Geek and nerd (shoutout to GeekSteep). Still trying to get a handle on this whole work/life balance while ALSO succeeding at work thing. I have some chronic illnesses that make that harder. Tea is my respite.

Favorite tea types, in order:
oolongs
green
herbal
white
yellow

Don’t drink:
black
pu’erh

A sampling of tea shops I like:
Te Company
Calabash
Volition
Tea Thoughts
Harney & Sons
Yunomi
Teavivre

RIP Butiki

Website

https://www.instagram.com/try...

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