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This tea arrived from Roswell Strange just in time to make the trip to Florida with me. Unfortunately, this is yet another tea that got left behind when I went out to shop. It is not bad cold though, there are definitely notes of pear and the sparkles are so pretty. I am glad Roswell Strange was generous enough with this sample as I still have the opportunity to try this one hot. It is a pleasant enough cup now but I will hold off on numbers and a more thorough review for when I try it properly. Nonetheless, thank you Roswell Strange for your generosity.

FYI, this tea is pretty good cold. I did not intend on having it that way but as I brewed a cup, my mom suggest we go shopping to buy a tea thermos of all things so this got left behind on the counter. Now I have a tea thermos so I can take it with me but today it was cold and not bad at all. It is a little more floral this way but still pleasant. Thank you again, JustJames!

Sipdown!! (168)

I just searched for “Vanilla Pudding” when I want to log this tea. That is probably a result of being overtired but to be honest, it is a pretty spot on description of this cup. This has a creamy thickness and sweet but slightly artificial vanilla flavor that I associate with pudding cups. Although, it is like a pudding cup for adults as it is rounded out with some floral notes to class things up :P Anyways, I tend to really like vanilla pudding so this is a hit and it will be missed now that it is gone. However, it is also a tea I really have to want to drink or else it is not as enjoyable (this is probably true of most teas though).

Sipdown!! (169)

This week has been kind of crazy for me. It started Sunday which I spent writing a paper that continued on throughout the night and took me until 8 pm Monday to finish. This was my first all-nighter of the week.

Tuesday, I slept in because I woke up early and felt so sick, I doubted anything would get finished. Luckily, I woke up at noon feeling fine and then proceeded to study until 6 am. The plan was to sleep in Wednesday but at 9 am I woke up and could not turn my brain off long enough to fall asleep.

Wednesday meant more studying and at 6 pm I started my last final. Three hours later, good or bad, the semester was over. I returned home to a meal prepared by my roommate and I hung out with her and her family (they are visiting for the holidays). Then at midnight, I started packing for Florida and cleaning my room so when I returned home, all would be nice and organized.

I arrived at the airport at 3 am (after some major issues due to unclear detour routes) and at 6 am I got on my flight. Unfortunately, the plane left an hour late and was so incredibly uncomfortable that I could not sleep a bit so I sat as the minutes slowly ticked on. The end result was getting to see my mom though so that is worth it.

Anyways, since arriving in Florida, I came home to the condo and dropped off my suitcase then went to a farmer’s market to buy produce and Publix to buy everything else. My mom and I brought the groceries back and then had to look up an address for Jenny Craig so I could go get my food. The Jenny Craig was close to The Spice and Tea Exchange so, of course, I had to drop in there. I left empty-handed, not really impressed by any of their teas but ended up in a store called “Sur la Table” because apparently despite leaving Montreal, I am still drawn to the French. There I picked up a Finum Brewing basket and a leaf tea infuser.

After getting home from running all our errands, I promptly started the kettle and put my infusers to work. I threw this tea from Veronica into the leaf infuser and Vanilla Orchid Oolong in the basket. Remembering that I felt this tea was a bit watered down in flavor, I dumped the whole 2 tsps I had left. Unfortunately, that has done very little to enhance the cinnamon for me. Instead it amplified the taste of the black tea which is emphasizing the bread-y notes and almost drowning out the cinnamon flavor. Consequently, I think this tea and I just are not a match and so now that it is gone it will most likely be forgotten. However, thank you Veronica for helping me mark this one off my shopping list.

There is a bit of lemon and it is blending with hibiscus. A tart drink but not horrible when cold brewed. However, this is a sipdown so I will be having this no more.

While packing my teas, I picked a lot and read each tea name to my roommate one by one. She said yes or no and her decision was final as that was the only way I was going to avoid packing my whole stash. Anyways, when I read this tea allowed, her ears perked up and so I offered to make some for us to try now.

This will definitely be coming with me to Florida because this is great. I wanted to try this for so long that I almost made a cup at 3 am this morning while I studied. Anyways, as my first introduction to Herbal Infusions, this does not disappoint. It is hot chocolate but not the milky treat that people have around a camp fire. This is pure, unadulterated dark chocolate flavor and it is amazing!!

Sipdown!! (172) but a very temporary one as there is some of this being shipped to me as we speak.

Thank you Veronica for sending this my way. I actually am really enjoying this blend. It has the awesome combination of brown sugar and cinnamon that is always so tasty in a cookie. It is not over-the-top sweet but rather it is reminiscent of a warm, soft, gooey cookie. Yum!! Now I regret JUST getting 1 oz.

So apparently clothes packing is far easier than tea packing. I ended narrowing it down to a box of different teas – some from swaps, some that have only about a cup left, others that are my favourite – all packed and ready to go to Florida.

I leave for the airport in a few hours and since I won’t be getting any sleep I figured caffeine wouldn’t hurt. I ended up grabbing this tea and Oatmeal Raisin Cookie out of the package from Veronica. Both are teas I forgot to remove from my shopping list when I bought them on Black Friday so Veronica was kind enough to include samples in our swap. I am actually glad because the Della Terra teas are somewhere in New York so I wouldn’t have gotten to try Oatmeal Raisin Cookie until I got back in the New Year and this tea is with my Dad in LA until my Butiki order arrives and he can ship all the teas to me at once. So I was happy to get to sample the teas to see if I made a good choice or not.

As far as this tea is concerned, it is not the most amazing I have ever tried but it is tasty enough that I don’t doubt I will be able to get through the 2 oz. It is thick and creamy like a pudding with a hint of banana sweetness. I was a bit disappointed as I was expecting a stronger banana flavor but perhaps next time some sweetner will bring that out. As for now, it was still a tasty cup. Thank you Veronica!!

This is one of the teas that Veronica shared with me and I was very excited to try it. This would be my first fusion tea ever and with a name like “Cinnamon Roll”, I thought what could be bad? The answer is nothing is bad per se. I am definitely getting thick bread-y notes so they got the “roll” part down. There is also a sweetness that could be icing. However, when it comes to the “cinnamon”, I am finding that I am a bit underwhelmed. It is really lacking the bold and gooey cinnamon flavor of a real cinnamon bun which is leaving me quite disappointed. You never know unless you try, so thank you Veronica for letting me try this tea. I have enough for one more cup so hopefully I can bring the cinnamon out.

I was planning on making a tea from the swap package Veronica had sent but when I got to my tea stash, the envelope from OMGsrsly caught my eye. Since that packaged arrived first, I decided to grab samples from there instead. I looked for the teas that could be brewed as close to boiling as possible given that I am in the midst of studying for my last final of the semester (tonight at 6 pm) and did not want to wait for the water to cool. That meant I ended up with this one and Zhena’s Coconut Chai.

Interestingly enough, despite having a cup of spicy chai in one hand, all I could smell was the sweet raspberry coming from the cup in my other hand. I thought this tea would be flavor explosion but like so many other French teas that I have tried, it is more subtle. This is not to say that it is not flavorful, rather there are many flavors that slowly come to light throughout the sip. The first is the gentle sweetness of the raspberry that slowly turns into a more strawberry type flavor, followed again by the caramel sweetness to end off the sip. It is a very nice cup and I am sure I will have no problem getting through this sample. Thanks OMGsrsly for sharing some of this with me :)