Christmas Tea

The Green Earl Grey is my favourite Fortnum & Mason tea, but their Christmas Tea is perhaps the worst tea I have ever tried . . . ever!

The tea base itself is fine, but the ingredients are listed as “mulled wine flavouring”. Now, this could mean spices to flavour wine to make mulled wine, but I suspect there is actually some sort of “wine” flavouring because there is a revolting vinegar-like taste somewhere in the mix. This is so repellent and unpalatable that I felt ill after drinking it and I couldn’t get the wine flavour out of my mouth. I ended up getting rid of all 200gms of the tea.

On the plus side, the special edition tin is beautiful – I love the contours of the tin and the old world lettering and gold print. When I was a kid, we used to receive tins of biscuits, tea, chocolates, etc. from Harrods and Fortnum & Mason and holding this tin brings the memories flooding back. We had kept the tins but they were all thrown out when I had lived overseas for 10 years, so the only reason I bought this tea was to own a good, quality Christmas tea tin that would last for decades. Initially, I had hoped to find a unique blend of tea for the season in time for Christmas but now it will have to wait until Christmas 2013.

It is definitely an unusual tea, so it is worth trying if only for that reason. Perhaps someone will like the tea and can post a review to counterpoint mine.

I get what they were going for here. The clove and orange is very reminiscent of wine mulled for the holiday with a little bit of cinnamon to round out the edges. That part is all fine, but the hibiscus is notched up several levels too many. I get that it adds a tartness which rounds out the flavors of many fruit, but in moderation. Each sip starts off well enough with a warming flavor, then as it reaches the back of my tongue the hib dominates the sip and from the end of the sip to the finish is an alkaline taste that grows to an ashy flavor that lingers. From the moment the tea bag hit the water and the clear bloomed to pink, I feared this tea may be a loss. It feels like there is a lot of potential, but a lot to work on here. Until then… NOPE.

I’m a bit shocked by the other reviews of this tea. I grabbed a tin of it (smallest I could get), had a cup, and passed along the rest to Sil for sharing. Perhaps it’s a different blend every year? Dunno. Regardless, this is amazing hot, but cooled it’s extremely drying and astringent, a bit surprisingly so. Hot however… oh wowie. Spiced like a plum or orange with cloves in it, rich and full bodied, it’s quite lovely. Not as creamy as the Twinings Christmas Caddy Tea though, so I think that one’s my favorite at this point.

I found this to be completely undrinkable and threw out the tea (though not the tin) after the first cup. Flavours all over the place, very little to like, really.

I know it’s supposed to be an experimental, ‘fun’ blend, but it was definitely not for me.

Beautiful tin, though.