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Okay, Nougatine is just a fun word to say. Sounds like something that would be on the grocery shelf right by the Nutella and the Marmite.

Nougatine is also fun to smell. Fruity-sweet; if it were a bit stronger, it would make awesome potpourri.

Trying an experiment this afternoon. I made a single-serve pot, heavy on the dry mix and steeping time (10 full minutes). The hibiscus in it hits you first—gotta love it or gotta hate it—but the vanilla and lavender and almond leaves this wonderful pastry sweetness on your tongue in between sips.

Also have a mason jar steeping on the front porch of Shabby House for sun tea. Since the hot tea steeping time has to be so long, I’ll have to let it go till sundown and see how the iced version comes out tomorrow.

Really, really, nice! It’s a light black tea with a flavor I’d call “golden.” Not smoky or bitter, just warm and slightly dark with the smallest bit of brown-sugar sweet at the end of each sip. This was a sample from one of my tea-storm-rescuers, and I am grateful!

(After years of receiving Christmas ornaments from friends and co-workers—the usual annual token gift—I finally started putting names and dates on them. I hereby resolve to do the same with swaps and samples so I can thank the appropriate people as I go.)

This is super-sweet, almost to the point of being cloying. I steeped a tumbler of this today and added a half-teaspoon of mate to add a kick. The mate toned down the sweetness a little and made it a really smooth, nice morning getter-goer.

An absolute screamer day at work (clock ticking, school starts, post-tornado, in less … than … one … week … and … everything’s … an … emergency) so to be honest, I’m not sure I could taste any of the tea I could find time to swig in between crises. But I found a corner to crouch in during lunch and enjoyed this one. A nice balance of the two flavors that tipped a little more heavily toward the Ceylon, which was fine with me. Would be great iced, I think.

I didn’t expect to like this — ginger and mint seem like they’d be wrangling competitively for your attention — but it was better than expected. I think the other ingredients tone down the contest a little.

I love the deep dark Assam taste paired with the brassier Yunnan. Nice match, and the combination is stout enough to take ice really well. Huge improvement over the from-the-tap restaurant tea I had earlier today.

Neat little local place called Woody’s is a combination of working gas station and mini-mart with some of the best smokehouse barbecue in town. (“I’ll have $20 worth of unleaded and your two-meat combo!”) Went for lunch and had iced Luzianne out of the big brew vat. There’s just something about on-tap teas that taste stale and acidic, even for a brand that’s generally pretty reputable. But it was cold and I was hot. Makes me appreciate good, freshly steeped tea on ice.

I love teas that are consistently and predictably good every time. This one is. Still getting the mildly spicy, appley hints alluded to in Upton’s description…and craving a piece of homemade pie.

Because I expected this to be really excellent, I took care with time and temperature to follow the package directions, and I’m glad I did! I would never have paired green tea and butterscotch on my own, but this is light and sweet and just begs for some delicate little almond cookies to go with it.