Market Spice

As I was pouring the tea a gnat flew straight at the line of water. I thought for sure it was going to just keep going and I was going to have to fish it out. But no. Instead it is annoying me by randomly appearing and probably laughing menially while I slap myself. The tea is safe. For the moment. I adore the Cinnamon Orange blend that this company makes. Even though I’m not a big fan of flavored teas the nostalgia from that one is pretty intense. That being said I am interested to see how this one stacks up. The dry leaf is nice looking. Medium-sized dark brown leaves with a spritz of calendula petals. The aroma is a bit weird. Kind of reminds me of cherry cough syrup. Spilled on cherry wood. Oh, and maybe a Marchino cherry with a bit of vanilla. The flavor has a bit of an alcohol twang to it. Woody undertones, slight bready notes finished with a side of Woodford Reserve. I would not seek this out over my Cinnamon Orange but it was good to try this once.

TTB tea! I drank this with sugar and milk, and it was still quite smoky and savory. I added whipped cream, and I actually really enjoyed it like that! The savory and sweet flavors went together quite nicely. It’s still not my sort of tea though.

TTB tea! I swear I thought I’d tried this tea before, but there’s no note for it. This tea is a little smoky and meaty, but with sugar and milk, it’s not bad. It’s certainly hearty. I don’t really get how it’s supposed to be similar to bourbon though.

I love a mildly smoky tea. Most Lapsang Souchong is too aggressive for my tastes (makes me feel like I steeped straight-up charcoal!) but blends that have Lapsang in them are often some of my favorite teas (e.g. Churchill from The London Tea Room). So, long story short, I took a gamble and ordered 4oz of this one from Market Spice without ever sampling it first. Thankfully, the gamble paid off! This is the perfect balance of malty Assam and smoke with a nice smooth finish. I foresee this being one of my go-tos this winter!

Excited for a gingerbread herbal in the Strange VariaTea TTB! Was very optimistic about this blend and it did not disappoint. It has a lovely gingerbread cookie aroma and flavor. Very much a keeper.

Ick, another tea with what seems like a strong aftertaste of alcohol, and not the good kind. Individually I can taste what’s supposed to be strawberry and vanilla, but together I’m just getting an overwhelming taste of the alcohol that makes up vanilla extract. Bleh.

This is one of my spouse’s favourite tea of all time. They love it so much that we buy it in bulk, essentially. It is a very sweet, very spicy and very strongly-flavoured spiced orange tea. So if you’ve ever been disappointed by a Christmas / Noel type tea and didn’t think it would be orange-y enough, this one might be an option. It is so saturated in orange oil that the leaves have this shiny, wet appearance and it smells so heavily of orange.

It is incredibly sweet and spicy, and so if you don’t like sweet tea, this is not the tea for you. I find it almost too intense, but every once and a while, I crave a cup.

Inkling Advent Day 25. I’m really going to miss opening these teas from Inkling each morning! I got to try so many new things, and so many desserty teas in particular, I’m so thankful! I love rooibos, so this was a great way to finish the season. The gingerbread flavor is a bit more muted than I would prefer, but I could definitely tell what it was going for. It was nice sweetened with milk. This particular rooibos wasn’t my favorite, but it was fun and festive! For some reason, I found the rebrew to be much tastier and more gingerbready. Basically exactly what I was looking for from the first steep!

Thanks so much to Inkling for putting together this calendar! Each tea is wrapped like a little present, and I loved unwrapping some rooibos this morning! I refrigerated this, and I’m enjoying it! The coconut is quite fresh tasting and goes really well with the rooibos. I don’t taste a lot of the fruitiness that you usually see in pina colada, but I don’t find myself missing it.

Mastress Alita’s Monthly Sipdown Challenge
December 2022 → A pear tea

This is truly awful. I was already having my doubts from the smell of it. The taste isn’t nearly as strong, thank goodness, but there’s something off about it. It has a woody sort of flavor with the honeybush that I don’t particularly love, but also the flavorings are really strong and taste unnatural. My last note said this one turned out okay, but I’ve got to disagree with myself here. This is nearly undrinkable.

James’ second pick from the TTB, also from Inkling.

This has a very strong artificial aroma. It reminds me of banana Laffy Taffy. Does anyone else get that strange feeling in your throat when you eat Laffy Taffy? I feel it now before even taking a sip! So strange.

The flavor is sort of like green apple Jolly Ranchers. The taste is better than I expected but it’s making my throat uncomfortably dry. This isn’t one I would drink regularly but it’s not so bad. Another that James really likes so I’m not worried about it going forgotten in the tea cabinet.

James pulled a couple of teas from the TTB that he really liked, and since I haven’t tried them yet I thought I’d have a cup of each today. This one was from Inkling, I believe. I’m not a fan of green teas in general (broken record, I know), but this one does smell really nice and has fruit in it so maybe I’ll like it.

I don’t. :/

It’s vaguely fruit and somewhat nutty, but mostly just tastes like a plain green tea. James really likes it though, so I know someone will be enjoying it.

2021 Homemade Advent Calendar Swap – Day 22
From Skysamurai.

There may be other ingredients, but this is a cinnamon tea. That is it. It’s straight cinnamon. No one can convince me otherwise.

I am on an ongoing (and thus far fruitless) quest to find a replacement for TeaSource’s old Reena’s Chai blend. Thus, every time I place a big tea order, I tend to throw in one of that company’s chais to see if it might be “the one”. This one is…fine. A pleasant, well-balanced chai with ginger and cinnamon and a malty assam base. It smells great and takes milk well. But it tastes exactly like a dozen other chai blends that I’ve tried for other companies. Nothing special or unique here and definitely not my dream chai that I’ve been looking for. The quest continues!

I wish that Market Spice would offer samples of their tea blends or even just let you order sizes smaller than 4oz. They have some wonderful blends that I love so much, but I’m always leery about trying something new from them because I know I’ll have SO MUCH to figure out what to do with if I end up not liking it. Unfortunately, this turned out to be one of those situations. I love caramel and I love pear, but this tisane doesn’t really taste of either! I do smell a bit of pear in the dry leaf, but for some reason they added cinnamon and ginger to the blend and those flavors are completely overwhelming everything else. It’s not a terrible tea, but it’s definitely not what I was hoping for.

Day 4 ADVENT – GINGERBREAD ROOIBOS BY MARKET SPICE

My roommate and I opened up our little present this morning and she squealed with delight when she found out it was gingerbread – she told me to just go ahead and make the whole pot. I don’t like ginger, but this was a mild cookie like flavor that I liked, it wasn’t spicy, and overwhelming. It was nice and smooth. I had three cups and she had two, and we’re refrigerating it for her in the morning! Thanks for sending this!

This one definitely has that flavor of red hots, like Harney’s hot cinnamon sunset. Except this is a green base, so the only thing you really taste is the flavoring with a tiny bit of the tea beneath. I think I do prefer it with the black base to give it the added depth. So this tastes all right, but there are better versions of this flavor profile. It’s just a bit more muted than I prefer.

We’ve really been enjoying this tea. It’s kind of the epitome of Hot Cider tea. Not sweet either though we’ve been adding a bit of basswood honey to each cup. It’s quickly become one of our afternoon mainstays especially as it’s begun feeling like Autumn.

This one’s a treasure. All the right autumnal notes. Sort of a perfect stereotype in a cup. Heavy on the apple notes plus the requisite amount of spice notes: cloves cinnamon, and nutmeg.
Is that all there? Yessiree!!

I bought this for my partner on a whim as he’s become a fan of passion fruit of late. I thought it’d be nice to have a good black tea to mix things up in the afternoons. The fragrance straight out of the package was bonkers good. It’s hard to describe but a punch of fruit forward joy! It’s a solid black tea with just the right amount of perk. A pleasurable cup to be sure!

My last Market Spice order was definitely a mixed bag, but this blend was one of the hits for me! I’m a sucker for nutty dessert teas, but I don’t remember trying anything that was macadamia nut flavored before. The nuttiness combines super well with the vanilla and the base tea is present but not too assertive. Really lovely with milk!