Holiday Tea

Last one from teafiend Marzipan! To be honest, I’ve gotten a little burnt out on these “holiday spice” type blends. They usually sound amazing and list flavors like orange or almond, but then they end up just tasting like cinnamon or clove. We’ll see if that’s the case here! I have the sachet version, and inside I can see small black tea leaves and tiny red flower petals. Dry scent is mostly just cinnamon.

The steeped tea also has strong cinnamon/clove notes, but I can also smell a bit of orange and perhaps some almond. Hmm, I mostly taste clove. The base tea is slightly earthy and musty, and I can taste perhaps a little bit of orange, but otherwise it’s mostly clove. Maybe a little bit of cinnamon too, but certainly no almond. Oh well. :P

Mmm… Festive! Thanks for the sample Marzipan :D

Picked up a tin of this, my first Harney & Son’s tin of tea, looking for something a little special for a nightly sip until Christmas.

After popping the top on the tin and taking in the aroma, all I can think of is a Terry’s Chocolate Orange… which I just so happen to love!

Sadly the taste falls short compared to the aroma, so I did the next best thing: a couple slices of a Terry’s Chocolate Orange served with this tea…. Christmas memories in the making!

Another tea from the TTB.. having fun!

I have been intrigued by trying a few Harney & Sons blends because they are a little easier for me to get locally, if I don’t mind sachets. But, I don’t want to buy a whole tin to find out I don’t like something as much as I had hoped.

I didn’t look this one up before I steeped it… This one smells of spice and cinnamon dry leafed. I could see that there were bits of orange peel in the blend but didn’t know how much they would come through. Steeped the clove and cinnamon are present with a bit of citrus. The base is there, but doesn’t add much to the blend. I think if I did it again I would add more leaf. The flavor is there, and something I would enjoy having around, but not as intense as I might like w/my normal amount of leaf.

TTB 9: This tea definitely has all the scents that make me think of the holidays. The holidays are my favorite time of year, so anything that reminds me of them is already on my side. Both dry and steeping, this smells full of spices but not overwhelming. The flavor doesn’t quite live up to the scent. The spices are there, but much much more mellowed out than I would have expected. This tea is nice and smooth, and I would drink it (and enjoy it) if I had it, but I doubt I would seek it out or buy any.

This mixture of flavors in this tea is striking me as such an odd mix. Almond, chocolate, cinnamon… I should love it. The cinnamon is at the front of the sip where it dominates and lets a little of the chocolate peek out near the end. The chocolate dominates the finish and the almond is in there somewhere, but it’s kind of in and out. The chocolate tastes like the smell of scratch and sniff stickers. Not really chocolate, but what artificial recreations come up with to represent the flavor. It’s light, airy and perfume like. It’s unpleasant and it bothers my throat a little after the sip. There is a scratchiness that creeps in and it’s really weird. This is going in the get rid of bin. I’m not into it.

Don’t ask me why it took me so long to brew up my first cup of Harney & Sons Holiday Tea, which I received in a beautiful gift package. It might be because upon initially removing the lid of the Historic Royal Palace tin, I was reminded immediately of Constant Comment. That’s not an insult, mind you, as I have imbibed my share of that grocery store classic over the years—it’s one of the few heavy blacks which I am able to down au naturel and to which I would never add cream—but I figured that Holiday Tea would not chart any new territory for me, given my abundant experience with Constant Comment.

Wrong. This tea is completely different from Constant Comment, above all, because of the almond, which is very prominent. I had no idea that almond was included among the ingredients, but the first flavor which popped into my mind after taking a sip was neither orange rind or cloves (as in CC), but almond.

This is a good spicy and original variation on the Constant Comment theme. The black tea used is pleasing to me, and I would not add cream to this one either. It’s very good as is. Fortunately, the cloves were not overdosed, as I am hypersensitive to that spice.

I really enjoy this tea. It smells wonderful and reminds me of the citrus and cloves that my family puts on the stove during the winter. A cozy tea, one that I’ll be keeping around for a while.

Smells of the holidays: cloves, cinnamon, and oranges. It has a light taste compared to its strong aroma with the same flavors as its aroma. There is also a little nuttiness to this tea. I have had some other holiday teas that I would prefer at the holidays, but I can drink this tea year round (where I could not do that with some of the others).

This tea took some time to grow on me, and still it’s not a favorite of mine. I went into my first cup expecting something similar to Constant Comment – bold and spicy with a citrus twist – but what I got was mellow, smooth, and honestly a little bland.

The smell of this tea is delicious. Like the name implies this tea smells like the holidays. Citrus, baking spices, and vanilla meld together and make the whole room smell amazing whenever you steep this tea. However, this build up is part of why sipping this tea is so disappointing. The main words I would use to describe this tea are weak and bland. Even at a full boil, for 5 minutes, with a HEAPING teaspoon per cup this tea isn’t very flavorful. It’s so surprising after you’ve smelled the incredible aroma.

The taste is okay. It’s predominantly one of vanilla, with a hint of orange rind, cinnamon, and clove thrown in for good measure. A great sounding mix that somehow turns out boring in this tea. The tea base is weak and tastes like if you used a small teabag in a giant mug even when you overdose this tea.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not terrible. There’s something comforting that makes it easy to come back to when I’m not sure what to drink, but it’s forgettable. It’s not a tea that I passionately remember and suddenly need to brew a cup of, it’s a tea I settle for when I’m not sure what else to drink.