Joyeux Noël

Yum! This tea tastes JUST like roasted chestnuts. There is a light bitter nuttiness that is followed by a rich, creamy sweetness…

This is so good! A great tea for those of us who aren’t very good at roasting our own chestnuts!

Oho. Ohoho. OhohohoHO. YES.

As noted in my last tasting note about this tea, I’d decided i was going to try it with a little milk the next time I brewed myself a cup.

I didn’t end up using milk.

What I did use, instead, was a little cream. Normal heavy cream, nothing special…of which I had only a tiny amount left due to having mixed up a batch of cream scones for breakfast this morning.

Oho. OHOHOHOHO.

That little bit of cream + the 1/2 teaspoon of sugar + this tea steeped for 3 minutes? MAGIC. This has now shot to the top of my list of the most perfect winter drinks EVER. The chestnut flavour is now exceedingly smooth, warm, invigorating, and comforting. It’s like the softest baby alpaca scarf for your throat. You just want to keep petting it and petting it, and it’s so light and delicious and yet so warm and satisfying.

In conclusion, my hat’s truly off to whomever it was on Lupicia’s site who expounded upon the virtues of this particular tea when taken with milk. IMHO, it’s now indispensable…much like my preferred method with Earl Grey. Positively delightful, and if this is a harbinger of how 2010 is going to shake out, I am ALL FOR IT. Roll on 2010 and Joyeux Noël! I’m only sorry I don’t have a lot more of the latter!

Nope. Sorry. I tried, but this is just not for me. I will reserve rating it, as it is so intensly not my thing.
Oh well.

When i opened my tin and smelled this tea for the first time i didnt think it smelled very good at all. but oh my is it tasty. I only brewed mine for a very short amount of time because it went very dark surprisingly quickly. I even re-used the leaves, which i never usually do with black tea and it was still amazing.

I cant really explain the tastes of this tea. It really has an amazing aftertaste though.

next time i might brew it abit stronger and try it with a little milk…

It is an interesting tea because of the chestnut flavour. Too bitter on its own even if I brew for 2.5 mins. With some sugar, it is sweet and slightly bitter. Great aroma.

Day 23 of the Lupicia advent calendar, a single sachet. Lupicia recommends having this blend with milk, so I added a splash of oat milk. Despite my hesitations due to this being an Assam and likely to hurt my stomach, I’m finding it hard not to finish the whole mug! It’s just a very smooth, easy drink. Nutty, malty, with a caramel note that really rounds it out. Bad for me but I’d recommend it for others!

This was the last tea in this calendar. Day 22 was a small handkerchief bag with a pattern similar to the calendar graphic. Very pretty, very cute, definitely going into the rotation as a tea towel (it can be folded flat). Day 24 is a tiny ceramic plate with a dove holding a holly branch in his beak. It’s beautiful and precious. I’m not sure what its purpose is, tbh. Maybe a spoon rest? It’s a bit too small to be a teabag rest. Pretty enough to just be something I add to my teaware display shelf more than use practically. Or maybe use it as a plate for a small tea pet.

This calendar turned out to be delightful! When I opened the first couple of days and they were just single servings of tea, I started to worry that I had radically overspent. Including the cost of shipping, etc., this ran me about $130. If it turned out that I had paid $5.42 for a single serving a day, I would have been… disappointed. But that wasn’t the case! This turned out to be full of variety and surprises – tasty snacks, fun items, and a tin. There were blends in here that I can’t get in the US at all. The packaging itself is stunning and sturdy. The boxes make a beautiful image when they’re all turned around. I’ll probably keep the box and refill it myself next year – it’s too pretty to only use once. I’m not really sure how to assess whether I got my money’s worth because so much of this is unquantifiable. How do I calculate the monetary value of trying a tea that I otherwise can’t get? Or a calendar-exclusive item? In an objective sense, it probably wasn’t quite worth the money. In Lupicia’s defense, the cost of the calendar sans shipping was $76, which it was definitely worth. Subjectively, I got a lot of enjoyment out of this! I won’t pretend that I actually regret spending the money. If it wasn’t for the shipping cost, I would put this on my list for next year, but given that added expense I’ll probably try something different in this slot next time.

This black tea is all about chestnuts. I’d say it’s a single note black tea, but the chestnut changes from nutty and mellow to a sharp (but not unpleasant) astringent aftertaste. If you do not like rich nutty flavours in your cuppa, this would be a hard pass. However, if you’re a chestnut fan, you have hit the jackpot. I cannot recall another tea with such a strong and distinct chestnut note. Make of that what you will.

Though it’s perfectly satisfactory and certainly as advertised, I’d have preferred another note to counterbalance the tea- perhaps a cacao or rum. This one is rather one-dimensional but the quality of the tea and flavouring make it a pleasant sip.

Interesting note: most Americans are not familiar with the taste of chestnut, as a deadly fungus from foreign timber started killing US chestnut trees in 1904 and eliminated virtually every native chestnut tree by 1950. As a result, is not at all common to see chestnuts in the US, though you can buy roasted ones in NYC as a sort of nostalgic treat.

Went down a rabbit hole this morning and was on Teatiff blog by skysamurai and saw that Hillside tea (a mn tea sto4e) sources there tea in part from tealet. I have not been to wholesale websites often before but this one waa great because it listed all the tea farms the distribute for and have short videos from them. It is very interesting all yhe different presentation styles for the farm. If you are familiar with the Kyoto Obubu tea farms in Wazuka, Japan and I would reccommend checking their video out. It’s unexpectedly funny. :)

Preparation: Western
Tasting note: Definitely brisk and malty and rich. I think the black tea has some natural fruity notes as I don’t see any fruit ingredients or flavors in the tea. I do get the nutty chestnut taste and coating-slightly drying mouthfeel. There is also a faint bit of creaminess. Overall really good. I have about a cup or so left from my sample to figure out if i would restock this one. Thanks, Cameron for the swap!!

This blend is another from my swap with Cameron. While I have loved everything else I’ve tried from Lupicia it’s not for me. I typically like nutty and roasty flavors but this blend reminded me of burnt cookies and while that may be someone else’s thing it’s not necessarily mine.

Oh, dear. I was hoping for something along the lines of my beloved Chaud Les Marrons, but this is not it. Hard to believe this is from Lupicia – I’ve never had a bad tea from them…until now. I was worried from the get-go since the dry leaf had a strong tangy smell, acrid, very unpleasant. Once steeped, this odd scent mellowed quite a bit, which was a little bit of relief. First I tried it with nothing added: burnt sugar. Like, not nice, but when you bake something sweet for too long or at too high a heat and it turns bitter. I added milk to even things out and it did help, but I was not getting ANY chestnut flavor. Maybe I overleafed, or it needs less time for the steep. I’ll try again with less leaf and a shorter steep time. But dang! this is not going to be easy to get through. I miss my Chaud Les Marrons.