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I honestly can’t remember why I rated this tea so high or why I got so much of it. It’s not bad exactly, it just that I’m not liking this tea nearly as much as I did a year ago.

I picked up some of this tea a few days back. I’m not normally a fan of hibiscus but it’s for a good cause so I decided to give it a try. I love the smell – it’s like a cross between fruit punch and dried cherries – which is a bit odd as there aren’t any cherries in this blend. The flavour is tart but not as sour as I feared, the stevia sweetened it just enough for it to turn into a pleasantly fruity-berry flavour. I’ll have to try icing this one.

Sipdown. This was a super-robust tea that I drank more for its caffeine powers in the morning than for any flavouring (which I felt kind of got lost in the strength of the base). I used the last bit to make Barmbrack, an Irish bread/cake. So delicious!

I was looking for an uncomplicated herbal blend to have as a hot drink in the evenings. I have a ton of fruit-based teas, but I find I usually only care for those when they’re iced. The flavour is mostly of mint, though the rose petals and rose hips manage to creep in there and give a little bit of depth and sweetness to the flavour. But you definitely have to be a mint lover to enjoy this tea.

This is one of the last samples from my DT advent calendar – yes I know it’s been 2 and a half months, but I’ve been seeing other teas in the meantime. ;)

I’m a huge marzipan fan and I loved the smell of the tea, like freshly made marzipan paste or the almond cookies my mom always asks me to make. Flavour-wise it’s a bit disappointing, there’s definitely the sweet almond flavour present but the vegetale flavour of the green tea clashes with it. I don’t know if it might be better with a different base, like a green oolong maybe?

I’m definitely getting more chocolate than coconut with this tea, though I can still pick it up on the end of each mouthful. The flavour is primarily creamy milk chocolate truffle which is delicious on its own, especially with a splash of milk.

Argh, this tea is a pain in the arse to measure. I ended up just dumping some in my cup and eyeballing it to see if it was the right amount. It still smells lovely and lemony despite the tea’s age. It tastes lemony as well but it doesn’t taste like straight-up dried lemon peel but more a sweet lemon cream. It’s mixed with the delicate hay-like flavours of the base with a hint of nuttiness. Age has dulled the flavour a bit, I think, but if you exercised your imagination a bit you could see how it tastes akin to a lemon macaron.

I don’t know where people are getting bubblegum flavours from in this tea as what I taste most are the mulling spices accompanied with orange peel. It’s very reminiscent of the spice mix I use to make spiced cider. What’s missing here, unfortunately, is the wine. The oolong base just isn’t a good mock-up for the booze and so the tea ends up taste like Generic Holiday Spice™. It does, however, hold it’s flavour through several resteeps, which is a point in its favour as I’ve found that most flavoured oolongs lose the flavour after the first steep.