Almond Black

*December 21st Sipdown Challenge Prompt – Winter Solstice: drink your coziest tea (while comfy if possible)

I love this tea! It is one of my advent gifts from AliasHali. I thought I posted about it the first time I drank it but I think I just remember sending detailed notes to her about it.

Almond flavor is cozy and comforting to me. It gives a hug and sets the scene for a good book, a soft blanket, and breathing room in the schedule, or sipping while watching the birds outside the window, or sitting quietly while a candle flickers.

I liked this better than S&V Almond and then I wondered if my memory was fooling me. Why was this one better? What if they were the same tea from a distributor being repackaged? Would I be able to tell by sight if they were different teas?

I tipped out a bit of both teas onto saucers. They were similar, both containing bits of almond, leaf color was slightly different with one being just a tiny bit darker than the other. Then I noticed a chunk of something in this one. I picked it up and squeezed. It was a little squishy, like a raisin might be. I broke it in half and saw that it was a cherry! No wonder it has a bit of an edge over the S&V version for me.

At this point it occurred to me that I should have read the ingredients first. Ha ha! Time would have been saved but I would have missed out on the fun!

Ashman is not as big a fan of almond flavoring. He doesn’t hate it, but his heart broke just a little bit when I made an almond pound cake recently instead of a lemon one. He still ate it, mind you.

From Simpson & Vail, he prefers their Almond Sugar Cookie quite a bit over the plain Almond, which he feels is a bit “one note.” True. While he didn’t rave over this, the reception was better than for plain Almond from S&V so I think it ranks between their two almond teas that he has tried.

For me, this might be a shelf staple. Probably going on the birthday list because I don’t think this will last very long.