Winterbloom Tea

Today was the big day! I had my post-surgical check up and got the results of my biopsies. No chemo! They were able to remove all the cancer, and no radiation needed this time.

When Ashman came home to go to my appointment with me, he had a bag from Winterbloom Tea which is here in our town. A co-worker and his wife had bought four wellness teas for me as a gift!

The cranberry and bilberry in this one intrigued me, and the birch and seabuckthorn sounded like something I could use right now with four wounds in my body and a huge reaction from neck to waist from an antibiotic. Maybe the birch will be soothing and help me sleep comfortably tonight since it is affiliated with the spirea family from whence we get aspirin.

I don’t drink very many herbal tisanes or wellness teas, but this one is really good. The cranberry is true, the bilberry is a nice touch, I definitely get the seabuckthorn berry flavor, and overall it was a pleasant cup to sip on. I didn’t add anything but honey would be really nice with it if you like to sweeten your teas.

This is the final tea for this month’s sipdown challenge for me as I don’t own any yerba mate that I can recall. So a tropical tea, it is! And it is an actual sipdown – hurray!

It has been cloudy and fairly dark all day as the fringes of Tropical Storm Ian approach. It is a but windy but nothing spectacular, but still we must make preparations. I have made a big pot of soup and have filled several carafes from the water purifier and continue to filter in case flooding should take out water lines again. Honestly I think this is going to be a non-event for us, but it is best to prepare. That includes eating a lot. I mean, what if the power went out? Truly, I do not snack like this in the afternoons usually! We will not discuss evenings.

So my afternoon snack was Parle-G cookies, homemade cardamom and cinnamon frozen yogurt with graham cracker bits, and a small pot of this tea. I give these details because the food demonstrated the importance of being mindful in our pairings.

After a few bites of the spiced frozen yogurt, the tea tasted like…almost nothing. The tangy tartness of the yogurt with the lemony warmth of cardamom and rich cinnamon cancelled the tea out almost entirely. I could have been drinking warm water.

After a bite of Parle-G cookies (which taste like not too sweet waffle cone to me, the hard kind and not the styrofoamy kind) the tea was so much better. Now I tasted coconut and most notably, the base took on an extremely smokey flavor. I could hardly believe it was same tea I had sipped moments before.

The remainder of snack time was carefully orchestrated from that point on so that the order was froyo, cookie, ssssmmmokey good tea.

A former student of mine went to a shop that had tons of Bellocq tea. I offered to send her samples of some of the ones she didn’t buy and in return she was going to send me a sample of Queen’s Guard. Instead, her sisters showed up today with three full pouches of tea in addition to the sample of Queen’s Guard!

I was torn between trying this or the Raspberry Champagne White but I have been enjoying Tropical Vibes from Cuppageek so I wanted coconut, plus it is partially serving as first dessert because to be honest we have been having at least two desserts or treats a night. Awful, I know.

This was YUMMY. It is so creamy and coconut-y. I know I am going to try it as a latte because it would be amazing that way.

Funny thing – I didn’t smell the leaves until after I had enjoyed several small cups of the tea, and I picked up the same very weird smell that I noticed in another tea not long ago. It doesn’t come through in the taste at all. It must have something to do with the flavoring.

I looked in old notes, and I smelled this same odd smell in Lupicia’s plain Strawberry Black Tea, which tasted great to me and everyone I know who tried it, but had a very off-putting aroma in the dry leaves.

Big bonus – Ashman loved it and it is available locally. I am pretty sure this White Coconut Creme by Art of Tea.

It took some experimenting to get this tea where I wanted. I settled on 2tsp (sometimes heaping), 10oz, 200F. First steep rather short around 2-3 minutes, second for as long as it sat while I readied myself for the day.

Great workhorse of a tea with solid flavor, a good medium-oily mouthfeel and enough caffeine to keep me wired while dealing with electrified people. This keemun isn’t fancy but it does have the hallmarks. It’s hefty, warm and brisk but never astringent or bitter. Deeply earthy but not dirty, much like a very dark tobacco. Lots of chocolate and tons of hardwood — oaky? Oaky. Okay. Leather. Malt. Almost creamy. Blueberry-strawberry-blackberry red wine undertone lifts it up and rounds it out like a pushup bra? Wtf derk. Hints of pine wood and a fading afterthought of smoke provide a little more depth. More mineral sweet in the second infusion. The pine, smoke and mineral sweetness actually dominate when I use less leaf.

Curious, I looked up this company called Winterbloom, found it’s a tea spot in North Carolina less than a few hours’ drive from so many memories. Thanks for the big ole bag and the big ole feels, ashmanra.