This tea couldn’t have come at a better time. All this stormy weather makes you just want to stay at home with a cup of tea. And I don’t think I could have picked a better “comfort” tea for today.
I usually reserve spiced teas for the holidays. They can be overwhelming year round and aren’t my favorite during warmer weather. But this tea is very lightly spiced and smells amazing—like someone just pulled a tray of snickerdoodles out of the oven. (And it has me really wanting some of my mother-in-law’s snickerdoodle cookies right now!)
This is the perfect tea to brighten up a cold or rainy day. While it smells pretty spicy, the taste is very mild. Just a tiny bit of cinnamon with a vanilla flavor that takes the edge of the spice. It’s made with green rooibos and nothing containing caffeine, so it’s also a nice evening tea if you’re sensitive to caffeine.
The tea itself is lightly sweet on its own, but I added a tiny bit of orange blossom honey to my second cup. I steeped my first cup for 6 minutes and the second cup for 8 minutes. The second cup was spicier, but beyond that, there wasn’t a noticeable decline in flavor, which was nice. I was afraid the light flavors might quickly go bland, but it held up just as well!
This one should definitely go on your list of teas for a rainy day (literally and figuratively!). It’s comforting, even heartwarming, and is just the thing to brighten up an otherwise unpleasant day.
Want to Know More About This Tea?
Leaf Type: Green Rooibos
Where to Buy: Plum Deluxe
Description
We’ve heard some of our teas described like a cookie-in-a-cup, but this tea is exactly that! Everybody loves a classic sugar cookie tea. This one is inspired by our staff favorite – snickerdoodles! – we created a calming herbal tea perfect for an evening night cap or just a smooth afternoon pick me up. We use our favorite herbal tea – green rooibos – paired with a variety of vanilla extras and a unique spice blend that comes together perfectly. It’s just lightly sweet and lightly spiced, making for a great cookie flavored tea.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Aronia Plum Berry from Saint Fiacre’s Farm
I had not heard of Aronia Berries prior to this lovely tea blend from Saint Fiacre’s Farm. Apparently the berries are so sour when they are fresh off the bush they make your mouth pucker, hence their familiar, less glamorous name, chokeberry. These berries are a new fruit flavor I haven’t encountered in herbal tea before. They are a bit sour, but not quite the same flavor as cranberry or hibiscus. They have a little bit of darker elderberry or raspberry flavor among the tart pop, maybe that is where the “plum” comes in.
What really makes this blend so fantastic is the balance of fruit and spice. The tart berries and juicy hibiscus are counteracted by the sweet licorice root and earthy fennel seed. Coconut and vanilla round out the blend with some comforting bakery-like tastes.
Rich and relaxing, this is a great blend for when you want that wintry mulled wine or cider experience. Always a pleasure to find new, robust flavors in my herbal tea collection.
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Herbal
Where to Buy: Saint Fiacre’s Farm
Description:
This tea features Oregon grown aronia berries, plums and cornflowers. A spin off the traditional sugar plum which is a candy that has a hard outer coating of sugar… think along the lines of the Jordan almond or an M&M type candy. A sweeter, desert like tea which comes from the licorice root and organic extracts.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Christmas in September: Winter Cheer from Virginia Tea Company
I’m a bit out of season to review Winter Cheer from Virginia Tea Company, but today is a grey and dreary day so a cup of tea with “cheer” in the name feels like a good fit.
This blend features black tea, peppermint, and cinnamon. Even in the dry leaf you can smell all three distinct flavors.
Having peppermint and cinnamon in the same blend is like sitting in a snowbank next to a campfire: there are both cooling and warming elements happening at the same time. I enjoy blends that make use of these flavors. Beyond their flavor profiles, both peppermint and cinnamon bring their own type of sweetness.
Peppermint has a creaminess beneath all its icy mint, almost tasting like vanilla. Cinnamon has a more earthy, herbal sweetness, more in line with cloves or licorice.
With both of these flavors set against the robust backdrop of black tea, you get a full-bodied brew with a very tactile mouthfeel, both cooling and warming. This is a fresh take on the “spiced black tea” trend that pops up every fall and winter. The mint and cinnamon together really make this unique and festive.
I’m feeling full of cheer already!
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Virginia Tea Co.
Description:
Sit back and relax with your family this holiday season while sharing this delicious, guilt-free tea.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Don Quixotea by Novelteas
I steeped one very heaping teaspoon of dry leaves in one cup of 210 degree water for about 4.5 minutes. (I decided to be generous with the amount of leaves I put in, probably because it just smelled so amazing and I was in the mood for something strong.) I could see whole cloves and bits of cinnamon bark in the dry leaves of this tea–lots of them.
I always enjoy trying out new chai blends and seeing which spices come to the front and how the chosen spices blend together and so on. This one seems to be heavy on the spice bits and relatively light on the black tea bits, and the spices include plenty of cinnamon and ginger.
After steeping: Cinnamon does seem to be a prominent flavor, going by the smell of the steeped tea. It’s remarkably light in color for a chai, with a sweet rich smell (not just spicy but deeper and sweeter) and has an orangey tint also.
First sip: As foreshadowed by the scent, some of the spices are sweet! The sweet smoothness is what I notice first. The spiciness isn’t overwhelming and doesn’t hit until the sip reaches the back of the mouth. I think I’m mostly tasting clove, cinnamon, and ginger. (There’s pepper in the blend too but not too much.)
With milk: as expected, this delivers a much more well-rounded cup. It’s still not very spicy though. My personal preference would be to steep this one much stronger next time as I consider it fairly mild when steeped to these specs. And I’d probably steep it in milk instead of steeping it first and then adding milk.
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: NovelTeas
Description
Join book-lovers and tea-lovers alike and take up your arms to a cup of our traditional organic chai spices – red cinnamon, cardamom, black pepper, and the root of ginger.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Firebird Chai by Wendigo
While sniffing this tea before steeping (what? Don’t tell me I’m the only one who does this) I can definitely pick up a big whiff of ginger in the dry leaves. The leaves are better-looking than average for chai; they also have more of a presence in the blend (as far as fragrance and so on) than some do. I also observed lots of chunks of other stuff (spices?) in there with the tea leaves. The curls of dried ginger were the most noticeable of these. (And also were quite impressive. Don’t most chais just have minced ginger or something? These curls were really cool-looking.)
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Black Tea
Where to Buy: Wendigo Tea
Description
FireBird
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!