3466 Tasting Notes
Fortnum & Mason Advent Day 17
Hooray! A Fortnum tea I have never tried before!
I asked Alexa (my Echo device) what was in this before I made it this morning thinking she would say she didn’t know. Instead she lied to me and told me it was a peach tea. I have had their Black Tea with Peach and really didn’t think they would put peach in a blend called Albion. Look on the website and I was right. This is a black tea blend with Assam and I believe it said there was some African tea (Kenya?)as well.
It is a hearty tea that I would classify as Irish Breakfast style. I was really surprised to hear that Ashman drank it for breakfast without any additions. This is one where the Assam is strong enough to tempt me to add milk, but I didn’t and had it at both breakfast and lunch and it was pretty good. It isn’t what I would consider a luxury tea but rather a decent daily drinker type.
Edit to add: just tried the final cup with milk (no sugar) and this really elevated it. Yum!
Very happy to have tried it, because I love trying new Fortnum teas!
Sipdown
December Sipdown Challenge Prompt – A tea you don’t drink in summer
I don’t drink this in summer because it is always already gone, as I only get it in the advent! Otherwise, I think I drink everything in summer!
First Advent sipdown from the Fortnum calendar! Make a carafe of iced tea for Ashman to take to work.
Fortnum & Mason Advent Day 14
Edit to add: Sipdown! Dec 28, 2024
Ten days until Christmas Eve? Wow!
I offered to make two teas this morning because Ashman doesn’t really like bergamot in general so I thought this would be a no go for him. He said he would drink it, and not only did he drink it, but he liked it well enough for us to have it again at lunch. The Fortnum advent includes 25 grams of tea per days so there is plenty to play with, experiment with, or just plain drink lots of pots of it.
The black Chinese tea used as the base makes this tea. I prefer Earls that way instead of on Ceylon. The bergamot is certainly there but at a pretty perfect level for me. I must say Fortnum does bergamot right, because I have enjoyed their Smoky Earl Grey, Victoria Grey, and Countess Gray as well. And it is great for making two steeps and combining them.
Fortnum & Mason Advent Day 13
Breakfast with Ashman who is off today! Once again, this is a black tea he will drink without milk and sugar. The first year we bought the Fortnum advent, he was still adding milk and sugar to pretty much all black teas that he drank. He felt that this one didn’t need it now and he said he liked it. He has always been partial to Ceylon tea.
I enjoy low and mid-elevation Ceylon teas, but high elevation by itself is too astringent for me with its bright, minty notes. This is a blend of low and high.
With food, it just tastes like a passable black tea, no outstanding characteristics but nice enough. When the food is gone and you are sipping the remaining tea, it does get a little brisk, but nothing I couldn’t handle plain. I wouldn’t reach for it on purpose if I wasn’t making tea to go with food, though.
The remainder shall be iced, Southern style.
Fortnum & Mason Advent Day 12
This is a favorite from the F&M advent. I love that they use Chinese tea for the base because it always seems to agree with my stomach, whereas teas from India sometimes seem to rile it up.
The strawberry is not super powerful in this tea, but it is definitely strong enough. I look forward to this one, even though it doesn’t beat Carol by Lupicia.
Fortnum & Mason Advent Day 11
This is a new to me tea! I think there are three or four in this advent that I have never had before and I am excited to run into one today.
I was a little put off when I saw that not only is it a black and green blend, but the green is a jasmine.
I made it like black tea with boiling water but kept the steep just shy of four minutes. At first I thought it was super sharp and harsh, but as I kept drinking, it just started reminding me of darjeeling. Since I like darjeeling prepared with a low temp and short steep, I decided to try again.
This time I turned the kettle down to 175F to pamper the jasmine green and kept the steep at three minutes. Now the color of the steeped tea is lighter and the jasmine is definitely coming out more. I think I prefer it this way.
Ashman had already prepared his and gone by the time I made mine, and later told me that he added milk and sugar because he wasn’t wild about it. He didn’t notice that it had green tea in it and had prepared it like a black tea.
It was a decent tea, but not one I would buy. I am very glad to have tried it, though!
Daughter Advent Day 9
Not every day of the advent is tea, but a great many of them are! Every day includes some candy – usually Lindt truffles or my favorite Cookie M&Ms. I have lots of new tubes of watercolor paint and new teas, too!
This is a sample sized pouch that was included with the other teas she ordered. I steeped it up to drink with our advent candy during our Beatrix Potter story time tonight.
I usually don’t like red rooibos ( I really enjoy green rooibos, though) but I have found one or two flavored blends that I actually like and I even liked Fortnum & Mason’s plain rooibos. (I did NOT like the one from Harney and Sons, though. My apologies to Harney because I want to love everything you sell but we can’t win them all.) I enjoy Lupicia’s Caramel and Rum Rooibos and there was a rooibos chai that Youngest sent a while back that was really good.
This goes in the category of red rooibos that I can drink. The funny thing was that I offered Ashman a cup and he said that he doesn’t like red rooibos and he doesn’t like fig but he would try it. He ended up drinking two cups, so I guess he didn’t mind it.
There is also hazelnut flavor here, and when I opened the pouch I smelled it and could not figure out what I was smelling at first, I just knew knew it was super familiar and it wasn’t the fig. The rooibos was more woody than Robitussin-y, so that means this blend and I can be friends.
Fortnum & Mason Advent Day 10
Edit to add: Sipdown December 31, 2024 iced
Once again, I tried this hot and just didn’t like it. In the past I have made sweet iced tea with it and that is how we finish it. Today I actually poured out my cup (a very rare occurrence) and made a different tea.
It was just too sharp. The base was sharp and the flavoring was sharp. Just a no today. Maybe I made it wrong but this is one I have had trouble getting right before, and I even love floral teas. Back to having it sweetened and iced.
Fortnum & Mason Advent Day 9
We practically cut our loose leaf teeth on Ceylon tea. The Fancy Ceylon from A Southern Season was magnificent. That was back in the days when we all added milk and sugar, but even as I began to take my tea plain, we still loved low- and mid-elevation grown Ceylon. The high elevation ones are usually lemony or minty/menthol-y and I don’t love them as much, like Uva Highlands and Lover’s Leap.
This is a nostalgic cuppa for those reasons, and I enjoyed it. Since each tin is 25 grams I can have it at least once or twice more.
