Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: The Tea Spot
Tea Description:
Our NEW seasonal Pumpkin Spice Chai may soon become your favorite tea to look forward to each Fall! This chai blend boasts a perfectly-balanced full leaf Assam black tea base with cinnamon, clove, cardamom, allspice, and pumpkin flavor to get you warmed up for Fall. This tea makes an amazing pumpkin latte with the simple addition of steamed milk. This seasonal treat will have you jumping in piles of rainbow-colored leaves in no time!
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
This year (at least this time of the year this year) seems like it’s been the year of the pumpkin chai! I’ve reviewed quite a few different pumpkin chai teas this year! I’ve enjoyed most of what I’ve tried (nothing comes to mind immediately that I did not enjoy, but some I definitely enjoyed more than others), but I think I’m saving the best for last! This one – this! This is one of the very best pumpkin chai teas that I’ve ever tasted.
The first thing that really impressed me when I opened the pouch of this tea is the aroma! Wow! I can really smell the pumpkin! It is a distinct pumpkin-y fragrance. It smells like the kitchen on Thanksgiving morning when the pies are baking! I smell notes of spice and black tea too, but the pumpkin notes are prominent!
The aromatic pumpkin notes are there in the brewed tea too. The fragrance wafting out of my teacup right now are scrumptious! To brew this, I used my Kati Tumbler and measured 1 heaping bamboo scoop of tea into the basket. I like to use just a little more leaf when I’m brewing a chai! This is especially important if you plan on going latte, because you want to accommodate for the heavier flavor of the dairy – or whatever product you’re using to make it a latte.
I brought 12 ounces of water to boiling and poured it into the tumbler and let this tea steep for 3 1/2 minutes. I usually stop at 3 minutes with a black tea (and especially an Assam, which this is!) but because of the spices, I wanted to give them a little more time to develop so I crossed my fingers and hoped that the Assam would let me steep it a little longer!
Fortunately, the Assam didn’t seem to mind the slightly longer steep.
This is a really delicious pumpkin chai. The pumpkin notes are distinct. They are THERE. There’s no mistaking the pumpkin here! This isn’t a pumpkin pie spice type chai where you’re tasting the spices of a pumpkin pie but no pumpkin flavor. This is PUMPKIN!
And even though the pumpkin flavor is strong, it is a true-to-the-squash type of flavor. It doesn’t taste artificial. It tastes like someone liquefied pumpkin puree and added it to my teacup.
The spices are nice. They’re good and strong – flavorful – without pushing it to the spicy level! It’s a distinct, spiced blend. Not just warmly spiced, but not quite “spicy” either. It’s somewhere between. Consider the amount of spice that you’d find in the typical pumpkin pie. Let’s call that mild spice. And then there’s the super zesty, spicy level … this is somewhere in between. This tastes like a chai that is also a pumpkin tea.
And I like that the spices are so thoughtfully balanced. I like that this tastes like a chai! I taste each of the spices: cinnamon, cardamom, clove, ginger. I am also tasting the allspice which is nice (and not always something that’s added to chai!) It’s warm, it’s cozy, but it’s also got a certain zippy invigorating quality that I get from a well-spiced chai.
You might think that with all that pumpkin and spice, that the tea winds up on the short end of the stick. But no! This is an Assam tea and it’s got some gusto! It is a rich, malty tea and the sweet, caramel-y notes together with the malt really play nicely with the flavors of pumpkin and spice.
For the purposes of this review, I didn’t go latte with this chai. I wanted to experience the tea straight up, with just a little bit of raw sugar added to enhance the spices a little. (This would also be amazing with honey!) After I finished writing my thoughts about the non-latte chai, I decided to add some steamed milk and it’s awesome like that too! So rich and creamy and yum! Better than what you’d find in the local coffee stop!
This is a very clever, well-crafted pumpkin chai. This is the best of the pumpkin patch!
White Vanilla Peppermint Black Tea from M&K’s Tea Company
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: M&K’s Tea Company on Etsy
Tea Description:
Polar bears? Candy canes? It’s that time of the year again! Yay consumerism! Yay tasty things! So hop on board the capitalism train, and try out a bag of our exclusive limited-edition White Vanilla Peppermint black tea blend! It has tea from Australia if you can even believe it. It tastes like a polar bear got into a fight with a mint plant that exploded all over your face. Seriously, try it.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
I’m really enjoying the teas this company I found on Etsy! The holiday blends are really unique. I love that they didn’t go the standard orange spice holiday blend route. Don’t get me wrong! I enjoy those orange spice blends, but, it’s nice to find something that ventures off the beaten path, you know?
And this blend is different from any other holiday blend I’ve yet to try. Mint is a popular “holiday” flavor, but M&K’s decided to change the mint a bit by adding licorice to the blend. I like the way the licorice cuts through some of those strong minty notes to give this more of a candy-like flavor than a mouthwash-y one. The sweet candy-ish taste is enhanced further with the addition of creamy vanilla.
And let’s not forget the black tea in this – because M&K’s didn’t! This has a strong, full-flavored black tea base that’s rich and has a hefty impact. It’s the kind of tea that I imagine I’d want for Christmas morning when my daughter wakes me up at the crack of dawn to open presents.
I like the way everything comes together in this blend. The peppermint is cool and refreshing. The licorice adds a sharp, snappy flavor that I like. The vanilla softens the sharper edges of the licorice and tones down the peppermint a little bit.
The black tea offers a lot of interest to this blend too, I’m tasting hints of smoke. I like the way that wisp of smoke melds with these other flavors, it sort of tastes like Christmas Day: it’s around 9 am. All the presents have been opened and you’re relaxing before you start working on that holiday dinner. There’s a fire roaring in your fireplace and you’re curled up next to the warmth of the fire and sipping on tea and enjoying something sweet that Santa left you in your stocking. That’s what this tea tastes like!
It’s a nice (and different) holiday blend!
24 Days of Tea Holiday Countdown – Day 24 from Teanzo 1856
Here we are, folks! This is the last day of my countdown with tea from Teanzo 1856! It’s been fun counting down the days to Christmas with this Advent Calendar and trying some pretty tasty teas along the way! I’m really happy that I had this opportunity to try a new Advent Calendar!
For today’s artistic inspiration, I chose another piece that I created for a swap that I hosted one year. It was the first year in a long time that I had what I call a “full size” tree – before that, money was really tight and we had a very small artificial tree. When we finally could afford a larger tree, I needed ornaments to fill it! And as I may have mentioned previously, I find the “boxed” ornaments to be just a little too ordinary. I like to think outside the box.
So, I hosted an altered art ornament swap that year. Basically, each participant was assigned an object to alter, and they needed to make six of those altered objects and send all six to me, and then after all participant’s ornaments were received, I would swap out the ornaments and everyone got one of each of the ornaments returned to them. They would send in six ornaments and they would receive six ornaments back, receiving six original and unique works of art for their tree.
This is one of the ornaments I made that year. My assigned altered object was “found object” and I used hot cup sleeves that I found at my local coffee shop. The town I lived in at the time was a small town, and at least once a week, I went into town and had a chai latte at the coffee shop. They had those cardboard sleeves to protect the hands from the heat of the beverage that made the paper cups difficult to handle otherwise. I liked the “tea cup and saucer” design on the sleeves, so I took a few of them one day, thinking that there was something I could do with them.
I rolled one of them up into a cone shape and turned it into Victorian-esque cone and filled it with little artificial flowers. I painted the sleeve with shimmering paint to give it some sparkle and added eyelets on either side to loop a ribbon for hanging. It was a cute little ornie, I thought.
Cherry Tea
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Teanzo 1856
Tea Description:
Cherry Tea is a deliciously fruity black tea. It has black cherries which lends a certain natural sweetness to the tea. This tea goes both ways just like most of our teas – iced or hot.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
As I said before, this is the last tea from my Teanzo Advent Calendar. I’ve really enjoyed this tea journey with Teanzo. If I could have “dictated” what teas would have been in the Advent Calendar, there would have been some changes made, but, for the most part, I’m really happy with the teas that I’ve tasted! And since there were some teas that I might not have chosen for a “custom” Advent Calendar in this year’s box, I’m actually glad that I didn’t choose the teas because this gave me the opportunity to try some teas that I wouldn’t have chosen for myself.
To brew this Cherry Tea, I used my Kati Tumbler (yet again!) and poured the contents of the sampler package into the basket of the tumbler. I then poured 12 ounces of boiling water into the tumbler and let it steep for 3 minutes.
The brewed tea has a very distinct cherry scent to it. It smells a little like a jar of maraschino cherries. There are some that might say that it smells a little like cherry cough syrup. I happen to like cherry cough syrup so that smell isn’t a bad thing for me, personally.
The flavor is very cherry. It tastes a little like a cross between maraschino cherry, bing cherry and a tart cherry. Maybe a ratio of 2 parts maraschino, 2 parts bing, and 1 part tart cherry. Now, imagine these cherries being macerated in brandy and then strained. Liquefy the cherries and add a splash of the liquid to black tea. Yeah, that’s what I’m tasting.
It’s a little sweet and a little tart. My aforementioned comparison to cherry cough syrup is appropriate for the flavor too, because I do get a hint of that kind of flavor (which is why I made the macerated in brandy reference in the previous paragraph. Cough syrup tends to have a slight boozy taste to me.)
The black tea is a pleasant tasting black tea – smooth and nicely round. It isn’t bitter and it isn’t overly astringent. There is a slight “pucker” of the inside of the cheeks toward the finish, but it’s slight and not unpleasant. It’s not what I’d call an aggressive tea but it is a strong tea, strong enough to stand its own with the strong cherry notes.
As the tea cools, I notice more of the tart notes emerging. Some of the sweeter notes of the tea start to come forward because of the tarter cherry notes. I’m noticing more contrast with the cooled tea.
It’s an interesting tea. Not my favorite from Teanzo – but I’m glad I got to try it.
24 Days of Tea Holiday Countdown – Day 23 from Teanzo 1856
It’s day 23 … are you finished with your shopping yet? (Please don’t ask.)
For today’s artistic inspiration, I am featuring this rustic heart ornament from Gwynn Thoma. I’m not entirely sure, but it looks as though the panels were felted and then stuffed and hand sewn together. It’s really lovely and I love the way it looks on my tree. Since about 95% of the ornaments on my tree are all handmade, I love the way this ornament really seems to define that idea. It looks simple and rustic, but I love the charm that it brings to my tree.
Mint Detox Tulsi Tea
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Tulsi
Where to Buy: Teanzo 1856
Tea Description:
With rosehips and mint, this loose leaf detox tea supports hydration and detoxification. You can sip this detox tea hot or gulp it down as an iced tea guilt-free since it has virtually no calories! Makes a fantastic and unique gift. This is a herbal tea that you can take with you in your water bottle and sip all day long to stay refreshed.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
There have been quite a few caffeine free tisanes in this Advent Calendar box from Teanzo. Some have been hits and others misses. Fortunately, this one is a hit!
I really like the combination of spearmint and tulsi. The warmth of the tulsi and the cool, crisp notes of the spearmint offers a nice contrast. The spearmint is refreshing without tasting toothpaste-y as the spicier notes of the tulsi help to reduce the impact of the mint.
Also nice is the light, lemony note from the lemon myrtle. It’s a really uplifting flavor that brightens the whole cup.
It’s a pleasant combination of flavors that I found very enjoyable. I don’t know if it works as a “detox” or not, but, I will say that this is one of the tastier “detox” teas I’ve tried. It’s thirst-quenching and tastes good served hot or cold and it has a nice, natural sweetness to it that requires no additional sweetener. Another bonus for the detox!
24 Days of Tea Holiday Countdown – Day 22 from Teanzo 1856
The big day is almost here. Just two days left to shop for it!
Today’s artistic inspiration comes from another 12 Days of Christmas swap. This ornament was created by Autumn. (Sorry, Autumn, I didn’t take note of your last name!) This is really a cool ornament. It’s difficult to tell from the photo (and the photo isn’t the greatest anyway!) but the base of the ornament is a juice concentrate lid. You know, the stuff you get in the freezer section of the grocery store in the cardboard cylinders with metal ends? Autumn took the metal ends and made ornaments! Really cool!
It’s not only a beautiful ornament that adds a lot of sparkle to my tree, but I love that it was made out of something upcycled – something that was otherwise destined for the landfill! 
Here is an up close view of the ornament…
Like I said, very cool.
I love doing the 12 days of Christmas mail art swaps for things like this – I find it very inspiring to see what other artists are doing with everyday “throwaway” items like juice can lids! Pieces like this really get the creative juices flowing!
Today’s teas is one of my favorites thus far. This is one tea I’m likely to buy again from Teanzo, because I suspect I’ll be wanting more of it soon!
Earl Grey Green Tea
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: Teanzo 1856
Tea Description:
If you love Earl Grey Tea, then try our Earl Grey Green Tea. You get all the health benefits of green tea, with that familiar Earl Grey flavor that you already love. A perfect gift for Earl Grey lovers!
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
I’ve reviewed quite a few Earl Grey black teas (an understatement!) but significantly less Earl Grey green teas. There are a couple of reasons for this: the first is that there are far fewer Earl Grey green teas available out there. With just about any tea company out there, you’re likely to find an Earl Grey black. Most tea companies has at least one black variety of Earl Grey. But, only a fraction of those actually carry an Earl Grey green tea.
The second reason is that as much as I love an Earl Grey black tea, I’ve not found a lot of Earl Grey green teas that I’ve enjoyed as much. I’ve enjoyed a few, but if it came down to a choice between an Earl Grey black and an Earl Grey green, I’d choose the black version every time. Bergamot just seems to meld better with the flavor of black tea better than the green tea.
BUT!
I think I may have found an Earl Grey green tea that I enjoy as much as I enjoy some of my favorite Earl Grey blacks. Maybe not as much as those Earl Grey black teas that are at the very top of my list, but, this Earl Grey green even when placed among the black teas would be somewhere in the top ten. Yep. I said it. This is a GOOD Earl Grey green. Really good!
I’m not sure what makes this one so much better than the other Earl Grey green teas that I’ve tried. The bergamot? Perhaps. This is a flavorful bergamot, tangy with just a little contrasting sweetness, it’s bright and invigorating. A nice, sunny citrus note that isn’t overly floral or perfume-y, but still very distinctly bergamot.
Perhaps it’s the tea itself? The green tea here looks like large gunpowder pellets and it has a pleasantly sweet flavor. It’s not overly vegetative. It’s a little earthy, it has hints of buttery notes. It’s a mild tasting green tea and it blends in a very agreeable way with the notes of bergamot. It has a slight creaminess to it that softens some of the sharper notes of the bergamot.
Together, this is a delightful match. The tea resteeps nicely too, I find that the bergamot notes soften somewhat in the second infusion but the softer notes are quite pleasant too.
This tea was one of the most pleasant of surprises discovered in this Advent Calender from Teanzo!