Christmas Eve (Un Soir de Noël)

Problem with having a home studio is that I’m home and my entire household knows where I am. They have access to me for every little question, need, meandering moment or argument they have. It’s Sunday and my hopes of unwinding this morning with a cup of tea IN SILENCE after a week or more of poor sleep is dwindling with every interruption. I want to shrink down and climb into this tea, floating like I’m Gary Oldman as Beethoven floating in the water with the night sky reflected into my cup listening to Moonlight Sonata in my head. There is such a comforting caramel orange flavor to this tea that I could sink into at the moment. There is an almost chocolate/burnt sugar note to the finish. I don’t think I was crazy about this tea when I first got it, but I’m growing to love it. Good impulse buy, 2019 Dustin.

GCTTB

Sipdown.

Hurray! The box arrived. The foil packet closure of this tea was broken, so I sampled this one. There was just enough left for a cup. I didn’t detect any fruit flavours, just the faintest caramel with the slightest bit of fig over a slightly astringent base. Not rating this one.

GCTTB

This is an interesting one for sure. Normally “Noel” teas have ingredients like orange and nuts and spice and though this definitely has orange, it is also a touch creamy. Plus, it makes me think of a Christmas ham where you bake it covered in maraschino cherries and pineapple. Not that it tastes like ham at all but the fixings are all present here and that’t the connection I am making to Christmas. With that said, aside from the orange and the fruity sweetness that can be picked out as pineapple and cherry (only a touch cough-syruppy) when you focus, the flavors are quite light. The base is a little astringent as well. It is okay, but not something I will be seeking out again. Still, I want to thank Shezza for adding it to the box thus giving me the opportunity to try this out.

From the GCTTB Round 6
1 tsp in 600 mL very hot water, steeped 4 minutes

This tastes like fruitcake or plum pudding! Plum, date, light notes of apple, candied orange/orange rind, mulling spice, maybe cherry? I read that this is supposed to have maraschino cherry flavor, so I’m disappointed there isn’t more maraschino cherry in here, it’s more of a dried Bing cherry, like that chocolate companies use to make dark chocolate covered dried cherries. This is very much like a Christmas dessert or those bowls of potpourri people put out at Christmas to make their house smell like orange and cinnamon.

Definitely fruit cake comes to mind with this tea!
That’s all I remember as I drank this last week!
Sorry, terrible review

First off, I’m an arse – I just got this in a swap, and yet I oversteeped it. Of course. Because that’s my way! So, uh, 12 minutes.

Shockingly, it’s really really yummy. It smells a bit like plum pudding or fruit cake. I don’t get much out of the flavor other than an interesting, plummy-type of dryness.. again… I messed this up. Thank goodness there’s another good mug-full of tea to play with.

Thank you shezza, for so surreptitiously sharing some of this with me in LOOK Tea yesterday.

EDIT: What? caramel, pineapple, sweet orange, and maraschino… um… okay I get the orange (fruitcake, that’s what I identified it as) and marasschino (same thing), and possibly pineapple… but caramel? No. Well, maybe. Well… darn it, I so wish I hadn’t oversteeped this.

I’m personally not a fan of teas like this, but this is an enjoyable, full flavoured, smooth, desert tea.