A new winter tea that quietly launch earlier in the week!
Back when we were in the brainstorming phase of this year’s holiday assortment, someone had made a comment about the 12 Nights of Christmas (I honestly can’t remember the context) and I made an offended joke like “at that point just make a holiday sleep tea called Silent Night”. It obviously stuck, and we ran with it!
So yeah, this is definitely a blend intended to be relaxing/restful – something that most of us probably need during the holidays. Other than just having a more gentle flavour, the main thing that gives this tea that quality is the addition of Valerian root. When it comes to sleep, ingredients aren’t one size fits all (DT has a whole podcast episode on that, actually) but Valerian is one that we do get asked about a lot and I realized that right now we don’t actually have a sleep tea with Valerian that doesn’t also contain chamomile – and that’s a problem for people with ragweed allergies or who, like me, just don’t like chamomile.
As far as flavour goes, we went with the direction of a gently spiced and warming orange flavour. There’s something about the combination of spices – cinnamon in particular – and orange that just feels so wintery and cozy during snaps of cold weather. I thought it was the perfect direction while also being distinguished from the rest of our sleep assortment. The orange has a bit of brightness to it, and is more prominent than what’s in The Spice Is Right (now renamed Orange Spice) while the notes of cinnamon, clove, and nutmeg are all more light handed. For people looking for a “Chai” I definitely don’t think the spices used here are at the intensity level to warrant that descriptor.
I don’t know – I guess I’m just pretty proud of how this one came out considering it started in a very non-serious sort of way compared to how most of our tea blend concepts come about. It feels really elevated and I can very much picture someone curdled up by their window sill on a really calm winter’s night watching a gentle snowfall with a cozy mug or pot of this tea – some kind of classic holiday movie playing softly in the background.
Friendly reminder that I do not numerically rate DAVIDsTEA blends as I’m currently employed there and it would be an obvious conflict of interest. Any blends you see with numerical ratings were rated prior to my employment there. These reviews are a reflection of my personal thoughts and feelings regarding the teas, and not the company’s.
I was unaware of the connection between chamomile and ragweed until now! This tea sounds lovely.