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.
