“Yay! New Teas! The pear flavor is sweet and strong, and the buttery sencha melds beautifully with the pear. I can even taste a very faint note of mint to this tea. Very faint, but it is there. ...” Read full tasting note
“Mastress Alita’s sipdown challenge – December Theme: Holiday Teason Tea #2 additional notes: Another good one to revisit! Pear teas from 52Teas are always special, so I’m glad I was able to try...” Read full tasting note
“New experiment, i decreased the steep temperature and let it sit for longer. I think i like the result. It is a lot lighter, but more creamy sweet and zero astringency. I think i came to realize...” Read full tasting note
“Got this ages ago and I can’t believe I haven’t posted a tasting note on this yet! Today I’m having this iced, because it is really quite warm and I really need to get the hang of making iced tea...” Read full tasting note
This was one of my favorite Christmas teas from Frank’s era, and to be honest, I’m not sure if I loved it so much for the tea (although the tea is really delightful!) or the name because – seriously – so clever! Right?
So what is a partridgeberry? Well, my research on Wikipedia tells me a partridgeberry can be a creeping herbaceous shrub native to North America (scientific name: mitchella repens) or it can be a lingonberry (scientific name: vaccinium vitis-idaea). Since I have neither mitchella repens nor vaccinium vitis-idaea at my easy disposal, I decided to choose the easiest/most accessible of these two to include in this blend: the lingonberry.
Prior to blending this tea, my experience with the lingonberry was limited to trips to IKEA and seeing lingonberry jam on the shelves (and at one point, I purchased some of that jam to make a sauce for meatballs. No, I didn’t get the meatballs from IKEA.) I also purchased some lingonberry glogg last year. That was pretty tasty.
Frank’s description of this tea went like this:
Yes, okay, I am a very silly man. I just couldn’t resist.
Back when I was planning to create all new blends for the 12 teas of Christmas sampler, I was trying to figure out how to go along with the 12 Days of Christmas song. I figured out this one and some sort of Turtle® chocolate treat blend. Three French Hens might have been some kind of French vanilla, but four calling birds completely stumped me.
Well, anyway, here’s our buttery-sweet Chinese sencha blended with wild-harvested Partidgeberry (Mitchella repens), dried pears and natural pear flavors. Silly or not, it is delicious if you like pears.
Yes, I love pears! And I’m much more familiar with pears than I am partridgeberries. And this is technically not supposed to be a partridgeberry tea but a pear tea.
I started with organic Chinese Sencha (just like the original recipe!) and added dried pears and instead of using wild-harvested Partridgeberry, I used internet-purchased lingonberries. And they look pretty in this blend, like little red crystals amidst the long spears of green tea and the chunks of pear. It looks very Christmas-y, this tea.
organic ingredients: green tea, pears and natural flavors
ingredients: lingonberries
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