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“Yay! New Teas! The pear flavor is sweet and strong, and the buttery sencha melds beautifully with the pear. I can even taste a very faint note of mint to this tea. Very faint, but it is there. ...” Read full tasting note
“Mastress Alita’s sipdown challenge – December Theme: Holiday Teason Tea #2 additional notes: Another good one to revisit! Pear teas from 52Teas are always special, so I’m glad I was able to try...” Read full tasting note
“New experiment, i decreased the steep temperature and let it sit for longer. I think i like the result. It is a lot lighter, but more creamy sweet and zero astringency. I think i came to realize...” Read full tasting note
“Got this ages ago and I can’t believe I haven’t posted a tasting note on this yet! Today I’m having this iced, because it is really quite warm and I really need to get the hang of making iced tea...” Read full tasting note
This was one of my favorite Christmas teas from Frank’s era, and to be honest, I’m not sure if I loved it so much for the tea (although the tea is really delightful!) or the name because – seriously – so clever! Right?
So what is a partridgeberry? Well, my research on Wikipedia tells me a partridgeberry can be a creeping herbaceous shrub native to North America (scientific name: mitchella repens) or it can be a lingonberry (scientific name: vaccinium vitis-idaea). Since I have neither mitchella repens nor vaccinium vitis-idaea at my easy disposal, I decided to choose the easiest/most accessible of these two to include in this blend: the lingonberry.
Prior to blending this tea, my experience with the lingonberry was limited to trips to IKEA and seeing lingonberry jam on the shelves (and at one point, I purchased some of that jam to make a sauce for meatballs. No, I didn’t get the meatballs from IKEA.) I also purchased some lingonberry glogg last year. That was pretty tasty.
Frank’s description of this tea went like this:
Yes, okay, I am a very silly man. I just couldn’t resist.
Back when I was planning to create all new blends for the 12 teas of Christmas sampler, I was trying to figure out how to go along with the 12 Days of Christmas song. I figured out this one and some sort of Turtle® chocolate treat blend. Three French Hens might have been some kind of French vanilla, but four calling birds completely stumped me.
Well, anyway, here’s our buttery-sweet Chinese sencha blended with wild-harvested Partidgeberry (Mitchella repens), dried pears and natural pear flavors. Silly or not, it is delicious if you like pears.
Yes, I love pears! And I’m much more familiar with pears than I am partridgeberries. And this is technically not supposed to be a partridgeberry tea but a pear tea.
I started with organic Chinese Sencha (just like the original recipe!) and added dried pears and instead of using wild-harvested Partridgeberry, I used internet-purchased lingonberries. And they look pretty in this blend, like little red crystals amidst the long spears of green tea and the chunks of pear. It looks very Christmas-y, this tea.
organic ingredients: green tea, pears and natural flavors
ingredients: lingonberries
At 52teas.com, you will find unique, hand-blended artisan loose leaf teas: a new limited edition creation every week of the year. We pride ourselves on offering truly unique, one-of-a-kind tea blends that you won’t find anywhere else.
I may be at a slight disadvantage (or maybe an advantage?) as I’ve never tried any teas from 52teas that weren’t blended by Anne. I say this just because I noticed in other reviews that mentioned that this is a reblend and ???? yeah.
so, that being said, this was a wonderful start to the 12 Teas of Christmas. I loved the buttery-ness of the green tea and the PEARS and lingonberries. I tried this both hot and then cold brewed overnight, and both were great. I may have preferred this hot if only because the pear pieces were warm and a+ for eating after steeping.
What a delicious way to start the 12 days of Christmas. The sencha was very mild which allowed a beautiful pear note to come through. There was just a hint of berry in my cuppa, but it paired so nicely with the pear. The partridgeberry offered a bit of tartness to contrast the sweet freeze-dried pears. I love a good pear tea, and I’m so pleased this one did not disappoint.
On the first day of Christmas – this is the first tea of our Holiday countdown/advent calendar of tea! I was really happy that this tea won a fair number of votes in our poll from a few months ago because I thought it would be the perfect tea to include in our 12 Teas of Christmas box – as the first tea of course!
I used organic Chinese Sencha and freeze-dried pears along with some dried lingonberries. When I googled partridgeberries, I saw that there seem to be two different berries that are referred to as “partridgeberries” – the first are Michella repens and I couldn’t find anyone out there that sold them which didn’t really surprise me since from what I could tell, the berries are pretty flavorless. Who wants to buy flavorless berries?
A little bit more looking into my google search turned up another berry that is known as “partridgeberry” and that is the lingonberry. And HEY – I know that berry! I mean, I’ve been to IKEA. I figured it’d be easier for me to find a Lingonberry (Vaccinium vitis-idaea) than it’d be for me to find the Michella repens.
The berries are actually really small, so if you get something that looks kind of big (like the size of the cranberry) that’s actually a cluster of the berries. I tried to separate as many of the berries from each other as I could but these things are tiny and it became quite a task.
But they are certainly very festive looking amid the rich, green spears of Chinese Sencha and chunks of freeze-dried pear.
I really love this tea – I loved it back when Frank first blended it, and I am enjoying it immensely now. Sweet pear flavor with a hint of tart from the berry. Lovely!
