One of my favorite things with the cold weather is being able to add spice to everything: cinnamon, cloves, ginger, the more the merrier! One of the best partners to all this spice, is juicy orange and citrus flavors. I love the idea of decorating my home with clove-studded oranges for the holidays to release their sweet and spicy aromas throughout the house. Not to mention, a nice slice of orange is the perfect garnish for a chai-based hot-toddy, with honey and lemon.
These are all the delicious orange and spice combinations I think of when brewing a cup of Orange Spice from PaperBoxGoodies. I’m not entirely sure what all is in this brew, since it’s not currently active on the PBG Etsy shop, but I believe it is an herbal blend from its amber color and sweet taste.
The best part of this blend is that the dry leaf does not contain hibiscus, so the tangy, pink herb can’t take over the blend. The orange is the main ingredient, adding plenty of sweet and tart flavor. This fruity, juiciness is balanced by a large helping of cinnamon, adding its warm, herbal tones. I think I see bits of ginger in the dry leaf, but the flavor is very gentle in the actual brew.
Juicy orange is the main flavor, closely followed by warm cinnamon. Neither ingredient gets too tart or too spicy, and they don’t overpower each other. It’s hard to go wrong with a classic taste combination like orange and cinnamon, so support a special tea Etsy shop and give one of the PaperBoxGoodies teas a try today.
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Herbal
Where to Buy: PaperBoxGoodies Etsy shop
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Harmony Tea from Mellow Monk. . . . . .
Genmai cha is a special type of green tea with toasted rice. Some of the rice kernels have popped in the toasting process, looking like little puffed, white popcorn pieces. I’ve sometimes seen genmai chai billed as the “movie night” tea for its inclusion of these popcorn-like rice pieces. No matter what you name it, genmai cha is a unique and delicious tea experience.
It was a long time in my tea journey before I put genmai cha tea into my usual rotation. Beyond the puffed rice in the dry leaf, the next most striking impression about the tea is that it is savory. If you aren’t expecting a savory experience, the brew can be a little unsettling at first. If you know this tea won’t be fruity or floral going into it, you’ll be much better off. Tasting Harmony Tea genmai cha from Mellow Monk was no exception.
Brewed, the Harmony Blend smells like warm bread or sticky rice. With these meal-like flavors, the warm tea might seem almost more like broth than tea. Over my years of drinking genmai cha, I find this warm brew and its toasty, starchy flavors to be supremely comforting, like sitting in the kitchen when the oven is on and bread is baking.
Despite all this toastiness, it is good not to forget that genmai cha is a green tea, so brew it with slightly cooler water to avoid burning the green tea leaves. Though the toasted rice is the prominent scent and taste of the tea, there is a role for the green tea to play in the flavor profile.
Green tea on its own can sometimes have savory incarnations, but it is usually a vegetable-inspired savoriness, like buttery bok choy or dark and nutty kale. The green tea in Mellow Monk’s Harmony Blend is much sweeter, and not too vegetal. It reminds me of a smooth green tea matcha, green and grassy but still sweet like nutty wheat bread.
It is a rainy, gray day today, and a warming cup of toasty Harmony Tea was just what I needed to turn my mood around.
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: Mellow Monk
Description:
Harmoney Tea™ is a genmaicha — green tea mixed with roasted brown rice. The rice imparts a nutty, toasty flavor that makes genmaicha one of the most popular types of green tea in America. Unlike some tea growers, this artisan roasts his own rice, which he buys from local farmers. (During roasting, some of the rice grains pop like popcorn. This popped rice is also included in the mixture to enhance the flavor.)
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
White Thunder from The Love Tea Company. . . . .
What a bold and dramatic name for a white tea: White Thunder. So many white teas get paired with desserts, like ice cream flavors or berries, so I was intrigued to try out this flavor just from the brash name alone. Besides, it doesn’t hurt that this tea is from Love Tea, one of our ChariTea companies. Learn more here.
The White Thunder blend features white tea, peony, spearmint, and peppermint. I brewed it both hot and iced, and preferred the flavors chilled. There’s something about drinking an iced mint tea, like Moroccan Mint, that just feels best suited over ice on a hot day.
Back to White Thunder, for a tea without any fruit ingredients, there is a delectable peachy flavor mingling with all the mint. This is a well-balance blend, despite mint making up half of the ingredients list. The white tea and peony really get a chance to shine and be tasted, and bring forward that bright stone-fruit taste. The white tea adds a sweet, mild, earthiness, and the peony compliments those tones with floral, blossoming notes of its own.
The spearmint and peppermint add a touch of frost to even out all the flowers and fruit. The balance of sweet and crisp feel like sitting on fresh green grass that has been cooled by the shade. White Thunder might be my new favorite summer iced blend, bringing just the right balance of cool mint and breezy florals.
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: White
Where to Buy: The Love Tea Company
Description:
Bai Mudan, also known as White Peony is a type of white tea made from pluckings of one leaf shoot and two immediate young leaves. Bai Mudan is sometimes preferred by white tea drinkers for its fuller flavor and greater potency than other major types of white tea. For an extra kick, peppermint and spearmint are added to this blend. Boom, crack, that’s the sound of your taste buds loving this blend.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
White Christmas from 52Teas. . . .
Imagine a jar of rainbow gumdrops. These sweets could go one of two ways: fruity, gumdrops, or seasonal spice drops. Is the dark purple candy grape or anise? Are the red ones cinnamon or cherry? Peppermint or pineapple? Orange or clove? If you’re not into these herbal-flavored treats, spice drops must be the bane of your existence. Sassafras instead of lemon?! Fooled again!
I like both kinds of candy drops, for different reasons. But the one reason I love White Christmas Tea from 52Teas is that it smells and tastes just like a sweet spearmint spice drop. The dry leaves are strongly fragrant with mint and vanilla, and the tea brews up with the same scents. The blend smells so sweet and perfectly creamy and minty, you can almost feel the spice drop sugar crystals on your tongue already.
This blend doesn’t feature the icy harshness of pure peppermint, but the gentler more herbal tone of spearmint. The natural creaminess of the spearmint is complimented by the vanilla notes from marshmallow root, bringing additional sweetness to the blend. A touch of cocoa and the black tea leaves add robustness to these candy-cane flavors, making the blend strong enough for any cold winter night.
52Teas is known to change their inventory on a regular basis, so I am not sure if this blend is in stock at the moment, but keep an eye out if it pops up in the future.
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: 52Teas
Description:
Here’s our premium black teas blended with peppermint, marshmallow root and organic flavors. I know we’ve done a few marshmallow/mint blends this year, but this might just be the crowning jewel. As a few of our 12 Teas of Christmas sampler purchasers have already commented, the black tea lends a faint chocolate note to the mixture of mint and marshmallow.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Up Beet from Teapigs. . . . . .
Beets were a contentious part of my family dinners. Every Easter my grandmother would make a cold beet salad and our seating arrangements had to be coordinated to put certain beet-haters at the other end of the table from the beet salad. I was firmly on the side of the beets, and couldn’t get enough of grandma’s beet salad. Needless to say, I was excited to try a beet tea.
Up Beet from Teapigs is a green tea blend with hibiscus, beetroot, ginger, and carrot. The green tea is really just a base to carry the bolder vegetable and herb flavors. I didn’t think any flavor could hold up against powerful hibiscus, but beetroot is a formidable ally in this blend. The sharp hibiscus is balanced out by the iron-sweet earthiness of the beets. Carrots bring their own natural sweetness alongside the beets, and the ginger adds a hint spice to give more texture to the flavor palette. The longer I let the tea brew, the more ginger heat and mineral beet flavors came to the forefront.
Punchy, strong, and sweet, this is truly a unique blend. If you enjoy fruit and veggie juice blends, you should try this tea. It is a sweet and savory blend, with the umami-earthiness of the beets, the lightly sweet carrots, and the fruit-punch hibiscus, all coming together for a bold, full-flavored cup of tea. As a beet-lover, I’m happy to have this tea on my shelf anytime I’m craving their bold, earthy flavors and I don’t have grandma’s beet salad at hand.
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: Teapigs
Description:
This blend will give you the kick you need to jump into your lycra, tie up your trainers, skip to the gym and throw that scary giant kettle bell way over your shoulder. This blend of beets, spice and hibiscus which helps give you extra energy, is fruity and punchy (enjoy with or without lycra!).