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I got surprise tea mail last night! And yes, I mean last NIGHT. Ever since lockdown, mail service has been crazy and we have even had mail delivered as late as 10 pm!

As it so happens, I was intrigued by a couple of boozy teas from Harney and ordered a sample of Black Cask Bourbon and a tin of Island Dreams, which are both boozy. They haven’t arrived yet, but joy oh joy, I got an adorable card and some boozy tea from gmathis! Thank you!

I chose Brandy for my first one this morning. I don’t know if I have ever had brandy. If I have, it was many years ago and I don’t remember what it tastes like, but from books I have read where it is rushed to bolster swooning women and warm nearly drowned persons, I assumed it would be warm but slightly fruity.

I am very happy with how this tea turned out! It is very woody, I suppose because brandy would be aged in wooden barrels? It is softly sweet as if carrying the memory of the grapes that made the wine. I thought of smoke first, but decided it is really just wood and smoke at all.

Quite a delight, and a perfect companion to my simple breakfast.

I made it! I had hoped to go through the May prompts three times and when I finished early, decided to make it four. I am very well hydrated today thanks to the push to finish.

This is for the prompt “a tea that reminds you of yourself”, simply because I have the copy of this book that my mother gave me in childhood, and my children and I read books aloud until they left for college. Ashman and I still do, sometimes. I guess our quiet evening activities remind me of what a peaceful evening for Marmee and the girls could have been.

I love this one hot. The green apple flavor is so fresh. For today, I made it iced and sweet and it was very good, and will be even better tomorrow.

The penultimate tea of my fourth pass through the May prompts – a strawberry tea.

This is our current favorite strawberry tea. I am so glad I found one Ashman loves. We were pretty sad when Anna’s Blend from Teageschwendner was discontinued, and Marco Polo is delicious but so finicky and harder to acquire.

If the shipping puts you off when you look at ordering from Lupicia Hawaii, I was right there with you and only ordered because I was getting a gift for a friend. Every single time I have ordered I have received a Paypal refund pretty quickly, bringing the shipping to a pretty reasonable level. I receive my order a lot faster than many things I order from here on the mainland, too.

Strawberry and vanilla, oh so creamy smooth – this is the black tea sister of Chocolate and Strawberry Puerh (which I just ordered more of during the sale and it is here already.) Enjoyed with a freshly made brownie and homemade vanilla ice cream, it was perfect, perfect, perfect. I prefer to serve brownies with fresh strawberries, but since we don’t have any on hand, this was a stellar substitute that made me not miss the berries at all.

I wish we had some of the decaf version left. Hope we sleep tonight!

A tea that tastes like a favorite baked good – May Prompt

My love of orange with chocolate probably started the first time I had Orange Pims. A couple of years later I had Jaffa cakes, then Orange Cream candies in the Quality Street assortment (I will resort to sneaky and underhanded tactics to ensure that I get those out of the jar before someone who doesn’t recognize that they are the BEST PIECE IN THERE), and only in the past year did I try Terry’s Chocolate Oranges.

So anywho, I iced this today and didn’t give it time to meld. I love this tea hot and unsweet, and it goes well with desserts which is unusual because I usually prefer unflavored tea with sweets. It was good iced, but would have been phenomenal had I given it more time.

For my lemon tea, I am having this one iced and sweetened. It doesn’t taste like lemonade made from Meyer Lemons, but has the lemon herbal vibe I expected. It is not tart really, but you can tell it has rosehips. The lemongrass isn’t too oily, as it sometimes can be. This would be good with honey for a sore throat if you don’t have lemons/lemon juice around.

This is not a repurchase for me, as I would prefer to just make lemonade if I want that flavor. We just discovered rose lemonade with salt thanks to The Spice House and now I am just craving that instead. Just stuck a gallon in the fridge to chill.

As long as I ice them, I should be able to complete a fourth journey through the May prompts by this evening!

This is probably the first tea I ever used to make a tea syrup and tea sodas. It is miserably hot and humid. The grass is crispy already because it hasn’t rained. Cold drinks are a necessity to combat this. Ashman had it yesterday and I am drinking it today between teaching and doing chores.

This batch seems clove heavy to me so I may have used more tea bags than necessary for the concentrate. Still tastes great and I will just add a little less syrup to my cup of ice and water. A little root beer ish, a little chai soda.

An herbal tea – May prompts

I had this with breakfast. Very forgettable honestly. It was pretty good using it to add spice to apple juice and apple cider in cold weather. On a hot and humid morning with oatmeal that also seemed determined to be disappointing, it was a crying shame. I did get a phone call that lasted through the whole breakfast so I was pretty distracted, but that’s no excuse.

I have Spiced Fall Evenings to compare it to, and nothing has come close to that one.

This is my best friend’s favorite herbal tea and she gifted me a pouch of it about a year ago. I am using this – out of order – for the final tea of the May prompts: a tea with unusual ingredients.

Look at all those ingredients…I didn’t know hazelnut leaves were a thing.

You would think this would be super tart and fruity, but it isn’t. We had it with buttermilk pie tonight and it was a really accompaniment to it. Apple was the dominant note to me, and even though there is no chamomile in this, it really tasted like a great chamomile blend.

It is also a sipdown, which is right on time because this bears a best buy date of four days ago. Does’t matter, it was still as good as the first cup a year ago.

Tea three – journey four through the May prompt.

This was very good and very grape-y. I was truly hoping it would be as awesome as Jingle Bells but it isn’t. If I had never had Jingle Bells this would probably be a gushing review. And it is a good tea. How could I expect it to be nearly the same when Jingle Bells has the sparkling white wine flavor?

I am happy to have it for night time! And I bet it will be awesome iced. It deserves a high rating.

Tea number two on my fourth journey through the prompts. Will I complete the fourth round? That’s a lot of tea to drink! Now on to this geeky tea!

This is a sip down. I had both Eleven and Mornin’ Waffles – same blend different name. It is very VERY sweet. Too sweet for me most of the time, but Ashman loves sweets and didn’t complain. Odd thing is that he hates maple syrup and this smells and tastes strongly of it and didn’t object – didn’t seem to notice!

We had it hot and I also made two carafes cold and sweet for him.