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This is the tea of the week for this week (wow, look at Anne. she is on time! What’s happening right now?)

I love this tea. Yes, it’s another coconut tea, but you know what? It tastes amazing so I’m good with that. The lime & coconut taste so good together. The background notes are hints of sweet cookie with the light sweetness of the green tea. Everything about this tea is just delightful.

The 12th Tea of Christmas – this is also this month’s “bonus” tea of the month. This month, I had planned on reblending the Coconut Cream Pie Black Tea as the reblend/bonus tea, but since I had not just 1 BUT 2 coconut teas in the 12 Teas of Christmas box PLUS I did a coconut tea for December as well – I figured, that was enough coconut teas for one month. I mean, I’ve missed coconut too (I went about a year without any coconut teas) but I feel like I’ve more than made up for it over the course of the last few months. (Note: that’s not to say that I’ll not be reblending the coconut cream pie tea, but it will be some time in the new year – and not immediately.)

Anyway, this tea: I fell in love with this tea at first sip. Yeah, it wasn’t strongly CHAI – but I didn’t really care, to be quite honest – because it tasted so good just the way it came out. It tastes like chocolate spice cookies. Like my brownie cookies & spice cookies got together into a cup of tea. Perhaps chocolate spice cookie would have been a better name for it, but I had already called it cookie dough chai & things were hectic & I had already made several changes to my tea menus (see the previous paragraph) – so I just kept it the way it was.

Just – so – good!

The 11th Tea of Christmas – I’m a little behind on getting these posted – I did drink this tea yesterday, but I just forgot to post about it. Yesterday was a little busy because I was baking cookies & wrapping presents & I forgot to post about the tea as I was sipping it.

I loved this cup. I think this batch turned out even better than the original batch from 2018. Back then, it was one of the four new teas & to be honest, I can’t believe it’s been three years since I last blended this tea – the time has FLOWN by.

The cuppa was memorable, even if I couldn’t remember to post the note about it at the time – peppermint & lots of sweet creamy vanilla & marshmallow notes. Lovely.

The 10th Tea of Christmas is one of my favorite teas I’ve ever blended – so I was very happy to see that it not only was nominated for the poll but it earned it’s place here. (Interestingly enough, three of the black tea reblends TIED for first place: this one, Banana Bread & Tangerine Cupcake) so that was exciting to see.

I love the way creaminess of the coconut plays with the bergamot notes. It’s just SO good.

That is all.

The 9th Tea of Christmas – I was interested in reading what others thought of this – I personally LOVE it & it tastes a lot like the bit of Pryanik I had last year. It didn’t really taste cake-y or even entirely like a gingery gingerbread. It tasted a bit like … imagine a fig newton, but the cake part was made with spices & sweetened with honey rather than sugar & instead of fig, you had a thin, plum-y jam-ish sort of filling.

The honeybush I use has often been described as “peppery” & I think it works well with the spices in this blend. It’s sweet & mildly spiced with notes of plum & hints of honey. Tasty!

This is the tea of the week for December 13. It was inspired by a Ukrainian candy – there are several different fruit flavors of the candy (not sure if it’s a brand name or if it is just the name of the type of candy) but the first one that I tried and adored – was the apricot. The candy tasted of apricot & chewy, buttery caramel/toffee.

My thoughts after trying the candy was “I need to make a tea with this kind of flavor profile.” And so I did.

The black base is strong, but tastes really nice with the notes of apricot and the hints of caramel. YUM!

The 8th Tea of Christmas! I was really happy that this tea won a spot in this year’s box, a little surprised too – because it’s been a few years since I last reblended it (I think the one and only time I reblended it was for the start-up Kickstarter rewards.)

So, I just reread the tasting note that I wrote 9 years ago for this tea (back when Frank first blended it) and it mentioned that I was drinking the tea at almost 7 pm – because I had gone back to bed after getting my “little one” off to school so my day started a little late. That little one that I got off to school is now in college. Wow.

Anyway, this tea: sweet, creamy & tasty mango. I wish I could somehow nail my favorite mango ice cream (that would be Baskin Robbins Triple Mango Ice Cream. If you happen to find the tea in your local Baskin Robbins, try it!) I just haven’t been able to find a way to nail that flavor – without overwhelming the black tea base. Maybe if I try it on a different base – anyway – until I do find a way to replicate the flavor of my beloved Triple Mango Ice Cream – I find this tea to be very satisfying!

I was inspired by the idea of a traditional English Christmas Pudding (dessert? In this case, I was thinking along the lines of a dense, fruit filled spice cake) & traditional American Pudding (you know, like a custard). I took these two ideas & put them into one tea. You get the fruit notes of date, figs & a hint of orange, you get some spice notes & you get a creamy, custardy note. It’s really tasty & as I mentioned in my description of this tea, this is the tea I’m putting out for Santa this year. (Because FYI: Santa prefers tea to milk. Anything contrary to this fact that you may have heard is propaganda spread by the dairy industry. That said, this tea does make a pretty nice latte & I’ve not been paid by the dairy industry to say that.)

I really love how this tea turned out. It has a lovely combination of fig, date & orange notes with just the right spice note. Slightly creamy. Slightly cake-y. Just – TASTY!

The 7th Tea of Christmas! I’m happy to be enjoying this tea again. It’s been a while since I last reblended it (Holiday Box 2018). I love this blend.

I definitely prefer our green tea blend as a green tea base versus Chinese Sencha, although sometimes, Chinese Sencha does work well & I think it would have worked well with this particular blend since Chinese Sencha has a natural creaminess to it – so it would have worked well with the custard-y notes. Maybe sometime, I’ll try it like that. I do recall that when it came time to first create this blend, I was kind of “anti Chinese Sencha” because I felt like that was the only green tea base that Frank used (it wasn’t – he did occasionally use a different base but it would usually be a VIT blend & that was something I wanted to change . . . & I did! So, that’s why this blend ended up with the Chun Mee & Gunpowder base.

Probably more than you wanted to know about why I used this base.

Anyway, this is tasty: sweet, creamy, custard-y notes with a delightful berry note. I love the berry tingle at the finish – it lingers. Very tasty, indeed.