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For the 1st Tea of Christmas . . .

Before I get into my tasting notes for this tea, I want to address my tardiness in getting out this year’s box & sincerely apologize to all of my loyal customers who have been there for me. I am sorry that I wasn’t able to get the box out as early as I would have liked to. I have been dealing with a chronic case of cellulitis on both legs which has been extraordinarily painful – thus making it nearly impossible for me to stand for prolonged periods of time, which is absolutely essential when I’m working! If I can’t stand at the table & blend & package the tea – I’m pretty much – well, I probably shouldn’t use that word.

So, that’s what I’ve been dealing with for the past 5 months or so & it’s gotten worse as time passed. Many doctor visits, emergency room visits & many bottles of various medications & pain meds later – I do see the light at the end of the tunnel with this – but I’m still very limited with the amount of time that I can spend working at the job I love so much. It will get better, but as my doctor tells me, it will take a lot of time. This isn’t something that a magical pill or shot can cure, time & proper management is key & part of that management includes getting the rest when my pain demands it.

So I sincerely apologize to all of you who expected to receive the box so much earlier than you did. I am relieved that all of my US customers managed to receive the box prior to the countdown date of today, and to my Canadian customers, I do apologize – I did not get the information about the Canadian postal service strike until a day or two after I had sent off the packages to you guys & I don’t know the status of your shipments as the tracking system has not updated since the end of November. I don’t know if this is because things on the Canadian side just haven’t been updating or if it’s because the Canadian postal service just hasn’t accepted the packages from the USPS due to the strike activity. If I had been aware of the postal strike, I would have instead shipped using an alternative shipping service, but, as I said, I didn’t receive notice of the strike until after the packages were already in the custody of the USPS. My heartfelt apologies for that.

NOW! On to this tea . . .

I was actually quite surprised by not only the request to add this tea onto the poll this year, but also that it won by an astronomical number of votes! Not that I disliked this tea when Frank originally blended it way back in 2013 (in the summer of 2013 at that!) but just that it was one that had not been requested ever before in the near 10 years that I’ve been doing this thing!

Wow, can you believe that? It’s nearly 10 years now since I took over!

Anyway – this tea is really quite lovely. Since it has been more than 11 years since I last tried this tea, I can’t offer you a very accurate comparison of the two teas, since all I have is my previous tasting note/review of this tea. What I can say is that in my SororiTEA Sisters review of this tea, I mentioned that I liked this one better than the Gingerbread Chai – which says A LOT to me because I really LOVED the Gingerbread Chai & I can comfortably say that it was one of my top 5 chai blends from Frank’s era.

I loved the way this recreation of that tea turned out. It’s pleasantly sweet yet warmly spiced. Beautifully buttery & cake-y, just like you want from a cinnamon-y coffeecake with just the right note of ginger. It really is a perfect way to kick off this countdown! (And thanks to those of you who voted for this one!)

I apologize for this rather lengthy tasting note with my status update – I just wanted to let you guys know that I haven’t just been shirking off my duties as a Mad Tea Artist . . . & if you’re still reading this after all that ^ – thanks for hanging in there with me! Have a great weekend!

Also – the BUY NOW button will not take you to this tea, but to a “similar” tea from Adagio (which probably isn’t all that similar to me at all, except that they both have ‘GINGERBREAD’ in the title.) There are more quantities of this tea available & they will be made available to those that ordered the 12 Teas of Christmas box after the 25th & to everyone on the website after the 28th of December. Thanks again!