Fortnum & Mason

Sipdown! (35 | 80)

Yay, another advent tin finished! But I still have 14 left… ^^’

I think this was my least favorite of the fruit-flavored teas, which is why I’m sipping it down early. Don’t get be wrong, I love apple and apple-flavored things. But this doesn’t taste like apple, which is very odd. There’s maybe a teeny tiny hint of apple skin if I really search for it, but the other fruit flavors were much more upfront. The base is fine, smooth and woody, but nothing special. So it mostly feels like I’m drinking a rather meh unflavored black tea.

But now it’s done, yay! On to the next mini tin!

Fortnum & Mason Advent Calendar 2021 – Day 10

YAY! Finally, a flavored tea! \o/

I was so excited that I steeped this up in a pretty pink teapot and drank it from a proper cup and saucer. Fancy tea time this morning!

I agree with ashmanra that the flavoring is very subtle here. The base is smooth, earthy, a touch woody. Definitely a Chinese black tea of some sort. Very mellow for the morning, but would be perfect for an afternoon treat. I do taste some apple, a touch of tart Granny Smith in the background adding a refreshing crisp quality. But if I wasn’t already aware of the flavoring, I might guess that it was a natural note of the tea, as it’s very subdued. It almost reminds me of the cucumber-like flavor that I find in some silver needle teas. Quite a refreshing tea! Would probably be lovely cold brewed.

On to the jam. Today it was Peach-Mint Spread, and I really enjoyed it! The peach was sweet and juicy, and the mint was present but gentle enough to not bring it to a medicinal place. Just a touch of minty freshness that was a lovely accent to the sweet peach. Too bad it’s not one of their permanent flavors, I would definitely order more!

https://www.instagram.com/p/CXUOG4muFJn/

Another sipdown! The Fortnum advent stands at 9 down and 15 to go! I think there are about six tins which have only enough for one more pot and five tins that I will need to finish all by myself since Ashman doesn’t care for bergamot.

This is a standard fare daily drinker Assam that is nice with breakfast and takes milk and sugar very well, although with food I drink it plain. Without food, I don’t drink it, but if I had no other choices I would probably have additions.

It is a good minutes since we finished breakfast and I still have the drying sensation in my mouth, but it isn’t unpleasant.

Fortnum Advent Day 3

I am not an Assam aficionado. This was fine while the bagel lasted and after that, really really brisk. My mouth was so puckery!

Last year, Ashman added a lot of milk and sugar to his, but this year he drank it plain!
Usually we polish off the whole 36 ounce pot of tea at breakfast, but there was a bit leftover of this one that was poured out. If I had put out milk and sugar we probably would have finished it. This is fine with food, but the only way I would drink it by itself is with additions.

FORTNUM & MASON ADVENT DAY 10

Ashman is off today so we had an everything bagel and tea in front of the fire. I forewarned him that this would probably be a milk and sugar tea for him and put some on the tea tray. He added it without tasting first. To get an idea of his tastes, he prefers white, oolong, green, and puerh plain and likes Bailin Gong Fu without additions but most other black tea is too astringent for him.

I drank it plain as long as the bagel lasted and found it to be a good tea for breakfast, with good flavor that held up even under the assault of the seasonings on the bagel. It didn’t feel too drying and it wasn’t sour. After the bagel was gone, the astringency was definitely noted and it was really drying my tongue, so I added milk and sugar and enjoyed the last bit quite a lot that way.

Ashman said it was fine, but he felt the body of the tea was not as creamy as he likes it to be when he adds milk and sugar. He said it felt a little watery to him, not in the ratio of leaf to water, but in the actual taste and body of the tea. He said he prefers to add milk to teas that already have a creamy body. He did drink two decent sized mugs of it, so he didn’t hate it. He said he didn’t find it too astringent, but he was having milk in it so probably wouldn’t have picked that up.

Sipdown! (37 | 37)

Another one I’ve been enjoying with milk and sugar lately. Apparently I’m on a tea with additions kick?

Anyway, having this last cuppa plain. I’m rather partial to Assam over Ceylon generally, and that’s the case here as well. This has a nice rich yet smooth malty flavor, pops of tart dried fruit and bottom notes of caramelized dark brown sugar. There is a touch of astringency at the tail end, despite my somewhat short steep. But it’s not enough to be distracting.

A pleasant Assam but not necessarily something I would specifically order. Enjoyed it while I had it though. :) I’m only at 5/24 for Fortnum sipdowns, heh…

Fortnum & Mason Advent Calendar 2021 – Day 9

So I know two other people who have this advent this year, and we all three had different teas for today. Oops? XD

I saw some nice golden tips among the black, though the leaves are somewhat small still. For me, this is just confirmation that I much prefer Assam to Ceylon, as I find this so much more enjoyable than yesterday’s tea. Strong, malty, rich in flavor but not bitter (I kept the steep somewhat short). Bottom notes of caramelized brown sugar and syrupy dark raisins. So supremely comforting and simultaneously bracing for a morning on which I was feeling both cold and tired.

It’s not a fantabulously amazing example of Assam, but what it does, it does well. And I will enjoy sipping my way through the 25 gram tin. ❤

Jam time! Today’s offering is Strawberry-Linden Blossom Spread. I don’t have a ton of experience with linden, but I have had both the leaf and the flower in tisane form, and I quite like it. I find it a bit reminiscent of elderflower, with that light and airy floral quality. Anyway! The linden here is quite subtle to my palate. I can detect it if I taste the jam plain, and it adds a gentle floral note. But I don’t think I can really taste it once it’s on toast. Delicious strawberry goodness though!

Another sipdown!

I loved the base last year but just couldn’t get much apple flavor. This year I decided to overleaf since the base seemed well behaved and it worked. Had this for breakfast and lunch so that makes Fortnum Advent sipdown number ten!

This still isn’t “in your face” apple. It is gentle and sometimes I even though more of pear. But it is smooth and enjoyable with a light and mellow fruity taste.

I liked this one last year but found little apple flavor. Tried it again this year and felt same. Decided to over leaf it and give it just a bit longer – okay, the overleafing was a decision and the longer steep time was an accident – but the bottom line is that it smells much more like apple and has more real apple flavor rather than a general impression of a light fruity taste being hinted at.

This is a nice base even without flavoring and needs no milk or sugar. I think I am seeing a lot more apple pieces in it this year, too, but that could be my imagination. Good tea. Ashman enjoyed without additions.

Fortnum & Mason Advent Day 9 (tin)

Last year I remembering liking this tea but not being able to taste apple. I decided to overleaf since it had been an enjoyable base that didn’t seem too finicky. I noticed a number of pieces of dried apple in the infuser.

It helped, and I was able to taste a little apple flavor. Now I wonder if sugar brings the apple out more, but I don’t usually add sugar – almost never, in fact. Nevertheless, I may try it that way with Ashman sometime to see if that amplifies the apple.

Bottom line – I like the tea and it tastes good, but the apple is a ghost of a flavor and if I didn’t know what I was drinking, I would just have guessed it was a light, generic fruity flavor.

FORTNUM & MASON ADVENT DAY 9

I was so excited to see that my first fruit tea is apple! I loved Little Women from Harney and Sons which is an apple flavored green tea and imagined this to be the black tea version.

I was a little surprised that the dry leaf doesn’t smell like apple. I was more surprised that the steeped tea didn’t taste like apple.

The leaf pieces are bigger in this blend than yesterday’s Ceylon and the Chinese black tea base is really good. Is something wrong with me? I can not detect apple! If anything, I would call this a hint of pear if I really closed my eyes and thought hard about pears while drinking it.

Maybe it needs a stir? Maybe I am not good at tasting things. Maybe English apples have little flavor. Maybe they put the wrong tea in my tin.

It’s good tea, I just never would have pegged it for apple.

Fortnum & Mason Advent Day 9

We practically cut our loose leaf teeth on Ceylon tea. The Fancy Ceylon from A Southern Season was magnificent. That was back in the days when we all added milk and sugar, but even as I began to take my tea plain, we still loved low- and mid-elevation grown Ceylon. The high elevation ones are usually lemony or minty/menthol-y and I don’t love them as much, like Uva Highlands and Lover’s Leap.

This is a nostalgic cuppa for those reasons, and I enjoyed it. Since each tin is 25 grams I can have it at least once or twice more.

Fortnum & Mason Advent Day 17 – (tins)

A good standard Ceylon to drink while having food, Ashman takes it only with milk and sugar and never plain. I drank it plain but only with food. After the toast and jam were gone, it was more brisk than I like in a stand alone cuppa. Good with brekkie, though!

Advent Sipdown #11 – I could have sworn this was going to be number 12 but I just counted the empties.

I only had enough left for a single cup and Ashman is at work for the winter storm, so I am eating nonstop, drinking tea, reading, and throwing wood on the fire.

I wanted a simple black tea to have along with a Harney and Sons Blueberry Green White Chocolate candy bar, and it needed to be able to cut the sweetness. This classic Ceylon did the trick mighty well.

When Ashman first started drinking tea, he liked Tetley British Blend with an obscene amount of sugar and some milk. He loved it, as well as other black teas, but decided he wanted to drink things he liked plain. That meant mostly greens and whites and oolongs. There are only a couple of black teas he likes plain.

This is one he took with milk and sugar but he adds a lot less sugar now. And he commented that this was especially good!

I like this one better than Afternoon Blend, which is also Ceylon. I get the feeling this has a ratio of low to high grown that suits me better. Classic crave-able black tea that goes well with meals and desserts. Coppery, resteeps well, and not a bother to sip down this little advent tin.

FORTNUM & MASON ADVENT DAY 8

When I first started drinking loose leaf tea, I drank a lot of Ceylon before discovering that I really prefer Chinese black tea. I have always liked low grown Ceylon but just don’t have it often now. My favorite was a pricey one from A Southern Season and the leaves were absolutely ginormous. My second favorite was Kenilworth Ceylon, whether from Southern Season or Harney.

The leaf bits in this one were quite small but I was hopeful because it says it is low grown with just a little high grown mixed in.

It steeped fast and is quite dark. Classic metallic and honey Ceylon aroma, taste was pretty good and didn’t require milk and sugar. It was better with food than without, but overall pretty good.

After breakfast, I did get the stomach burn that often follows tea from India, but not too bad and it stopped quickly. The remainder will probably become iced tea.

Sipdown! (34 | 34)

So for some reason, I’ve been drinking a lot of breakfast black teas with milk and sugar lately, which is extremely unlike me. I think it started because I was craving some comfort with the onset of cooler weather recently, and then I just kept doing it. So that was the case for most of this mini tin, as Ceylon isn’t my favorite and lends itself well to additions.

Having this last cuppa plain though, and it’s fairly tasty this way. Getting a lot more sticky dried fruit notes than I remember, particularly golden raisin. Also tastes a bit like generic iced tea. Fairly smooth, though I did keep the steep a bit short because of the dusty bits at the bottom of the tin.

4 down, 20 to go! x.x

Fortnum & Mason Advent Calendar 2021 – Day 8

Surprise, surprise, another straight black tea. And I love black tea, but I feel like Fortnum is shooting itself in the foot a bit here by not mixing up the teas more. It just becomes boring to have slightly different shades of the same thing every day, when I know there are other types of tea and flavored teas in this advent as well.

Anyway. This is a mix of high and low-grown Ceylon. Ceylon doesn’t tend to be my favorite, but I’ve had a few that I’ve really liked. This isn’t one of those, but it’s still fairly tasty. It does have rather a lot of acidity to it, so not something I would want to drink on an empty stomach probably.

Otherwise it’s fairly smooth, woody, a touch bready, very slightly grassy or vegetal. It does have a lot of that Lipton-esque “tea” flavor that I don’t have another word to describe. A touch of briskness but nothing major, and some musty hay. I feel like I’m tasting just a teeny hint of some sort of aromatic herbal flavor like pine or eucalyptus, but having a hard time pinning it down. Fairly standard Ceylon taste to my tongue, though I’m probably not explaining it well… :D

On to the jam! Today it’s an interesting one, and I think it’s new this year? It’s Wild Blueberry-Balm Leaves Spread. I’m assuming they mean lemon balm…? But unsure. It’s tasty though, with a very sweet and rich blueberry flavor. There is a subtle herbaceous note that’s slightly minty, so could definitely be lemon balm. It adds a nice bit of interest to an otherwise very sweet jam! :)

Fortnum & Mason Advent Day 13 (tins)

This is a decent Darjeeling, and very good with breakfast. I wouldn’t seek it out as a solitary cup, but I am not a huge Darjeeling fan to begin with, save for Lupicia’s Sakura Premium and a good Margaret’s Hope second flush.

Fortunately, you can fine tune your steeping parameters to adjust the briskness (yow!) and strength. At 185F and three minutes, this steeped up darker than my other Darjeelings have done, but they were whole leaf mostly. I like it, but I wouldn’t buy a whole tin. I DO enjoy it as a breakfast tea, maybe even more than their breakfast blends.

Fortnum Advent Sipdown #18

Why am I pushing myself to finish all these teas by the end of January? Because the wooden advent box is large and I want to keep it as a Christmas decoration rather than leave it out all year. I want to keep all the empty tins in it and I don’t want to have to get it back out again after I get it all put away neatly so tins must be emptied ASAP.

Darjeeling isn’t a favorite tea type for me, nor for Ashman although he didn’t mind this one. I had a lot left so today it became a gallon of sweet iced tea! It tastes pretty good this way actually, and we will definitely enjoy polishing it off this way much more than laboring through several pots of hot tea.

As an iced tea, the color is especially nice. It has such clarity and tastes as clean and fresh as it looks.

Fortnum & Mason Advent Day 7

My first darjeeling made me think I hated darjeeling. I made it like any black tea. Much later I discovered that cooler water and shorter steeps made them drinkable for me. I know people who adore darjeeling, and I am probably in the minority not caring for it much. An exception is Sakura Premium from Lupicia, which has all the very best bits of darjeeling and is just arresting to drink, even though my heart still belongs to Chinese black tea.

I made this one at 185F for three minutes and it was just okay. Not offensive, it tasted like an inexpensive daily drinker that was nothing special. But Fortnum should be special, even if it is their lower grade.

I made another cup a little hotter with a slightly longer steep and got more of the classic darjeeling strength, briskness, and fruitiness. It is not as good as Lupicia’s but was better than some other darjeeling I have tried. I will drink it, but I won’t seek more. Went fine with breakfast!

Sipdown! (88 | 185)

I enjoyed this one. It’s not something I would go out and buy, but I found it a pleasant respite from the various breakfast blends and fruit-flavored Chinese black teas. It’s mellow yet flavorful, with a chewy bready note alongside raw grains and slightly musty hay. Fairly smooth, though I only steeped it for 2 minutes because of the very broken leaf.

Anyway, a simple but pleasant tea. And another one down from my Fortnum advent! :)

Fortnum & Mason Advent Calendar 2021 – Day 7

Sigh. Why must you put all of the straight black teas in a row, Fortnum? It has me wondering if the flavored black teas are going to be the same way, and we’ll eventually have like six days in a row of fruit-flavored black tea, probably with the same base…

Being a BOP, it’s a very broken leaf, so I kept the steep to 2 minutes. I’m quite enjoying it, really. Obviously a late flush Darjeeling, it has a thick, chewy, bready flavor to it with oodles of raw grain and musty hay. Perhaps slightly mustier than I would prefer, but still. It’s strong and flavorful, and I think juuuust on the edge of being slightly bitter, but not quite there. There’s a slight astringency, but nothing notable.

I like this one as an alternative to a breakfast blend. Darjeeling has such a different flavor from the usual suspects, and it makes for a somewhat mellower cuppa. But this one is still strong enough that it would take milk well, if I were so inclined.

Let’s jam! Today it’s a split and toasted English muffin with butter and Bonne Maman’s Apricot-Lavender Spread. Now, I’m not a fan of lavender in food and drink generally. I enjoy it as a scent in cleaning and bath products, but I find it too soapy in taste. However. This is mostly an apricot preserve (which happens to be one of my favorites) with just a light accent of lavender. It adds a light floral, citrusy top note and I quite like it! So pleased at how subtle Bonne Maman is with these floral additions that could easily be very perfumey. :)

Sipdown! (24 | 240)

Mastress Alita’s Sipdown Challenge (September) – “A tea with a strong aroma”

It doesn’t get much more aromatic than an Earl Grey with a smoked base!

Really enjoyed this tea overall, the smokiness is fairly mellow and doesn’t take over the cup, and it’s more of a savory meaty smoke than a charcoal one. The bergamot is more of a supporting flavor, and adds a nice bright, lemony component to lighten it up a bit. Base is smooth and very earthy.

Very pleasant, but I’m not sure I need more than one smoky Earl Grey in my cupboard, and I prefer Lupicia’s Earl Grey Grand Classic to this tea. :)