This is our 5th Tea of Christmas! Every year for our holiday poll, quite a few banana teas are nominated and of those – several win enough votes to win their way into the box. However, I want to maintain a variety of tea flavors within the box (I probably could do a banana box with as many banana teas we have blended and how many of those have been requested as a reblend.) So I choose the one tea that received the most votes.
And that would be this tea.
I did tweak the recipe slightly this time around – and I added a teensy bit of Lapsang Souchong. I did this after the initial taste test and I realized that it kind of tasted a little “flat” – like it needed something. This may be because I’ve recently had some bananas foster (the dessert) and the deep caramelization that came from the flambe of the brown sugar was something that I wanted in this tea and I think that the addition of the Lapsang Souchong accomplished this.
It smells a lot smokier than it actually tastes – especially after some cool time – where the smoke melds together with the rum & caramel. I really like how these flavors fuse together in the sip so – as CrowKettle mentioned in her post – this tea definitely does benefit from some cool time.
