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I found a box of tea from Dryad. Checking their website, it looks like I placed my order nearly two years ago.

Oops?

I’ll try to be less critical, since it could be that it’d be better if it were fresh.

Then again, maybe it’ll work in a blend’s favour! The only other tasting note for Skylark says that it’s minty + fruity and medicinal. I didn’t get any mint at all (thank goodness). It just tasted like mulled cider to me, or maybe mulled … fruit punch? Maybe not quite, but it definitely had more nuance to it than just apple. It’s not my favourite thing (I lean more towards spicy or floral than fruity), but it’s quite nice. I think I’ll have the second cup of this sample cold and see what happens.

Slightly sweet clove water, prolly from the pumpkin. I’m amused that the last tea in this advent calendar is pumpkin spice. Anyway, yay! It’s finished! I’m hopped up on caffeine, but I don’t care, I’m going to find my next tea immediately. Something new! Something different! Something without cloves!

Smells a bit like chai, and the black pepper makes this clove water a little nippy, which is nice. Loads of leakage from the tea dust packet, this time; lots of sediment at the bottom of the glass. Cardamom is usually easy for me to detect, but not here. Not getting the cinnamon, either. The only thing I can appreciate is the lingering heat from the black pepper; I think I’d like more of that. (And it’s very clearly from the black pepper, not from the ginger, which was also imperceptible to me.)

The packet of tea dust smells really nice, and although I’m not an apricot connoisseur, it feels accurate. The brew retains that lovely, spiced apricot fragrance, but as the tea cools it fades to—you guessed it!—clove water. I feel like I did taste something other than cloves at the very beginning for a few sips, but I’m not sure.

Other tasting notes about this blend are very positive, which makes me think there must be an absolute galaxy of difference between their loose tea and their tea dust packets. I’ve even started steeping in just 235ml/8ish oz of water, in an effort to really give their teas the benefit of the doubt. But I’m pretty much all doubt at this point.

Nice fragrance, but not much flavour. I like orange teas, but find blood orange to be a bit tart, so it’s probably just as well.

I’m mildly offended by this blend’s name. Chai? Please.
“Very spicy!”, says the tea’s description. My foot.
“Rooibos with Eastern spices”, says the ESTC website. Eastern spices? What?

Okay maybe a little more than offended and into engrumbled territory. Honestly, the rah rah ’Murica tone and ignorance of anything non-US apparent in their descriptions has kinda turned me off this place. There are loads of other arteasans out there that have sensibilities better aligned with my own.

The tea is okay. The apple flavour is nice and the clove—yes, there’s clove—isn’t overpowering. But there’s no mix of spices, here, certainly not what one would expect from “chai”.

I love rose, so this was a safe bet. It’s a nice one, although—as usual, for this company’s blends—too subtle for my palate. And the type of rose is interesting, too. It’s not Rooh Afza rose, it’s not Indian sweets rose, it’s not Turkish delight rose. It’s more … eau de toilette, talcum powdery rose? I wasn’t expecting that at all. Not my favourite, but kinda different, kinda nice.

Eastern Shore Tea Company’s tea bags are tiny, with a small scoop of tea dust in them. Don’t shake them, because the dust escapes. And if you happen to be leaning in for a mighty sniff at the time, much sneezing ensues. Anyway. I think I’m going to start using less water; maybe that’ll make the flavour more pronounced.

Aaaaaaagh it smells so good!

Which is why it’s such a disappointment. It’s a glass of hot water that smells really good. =( It smells like honey and ginger and tastes very vaguely of honey (which I guess is the pear). I had such high hopes. While I prefer intense flavours, I don’t mind subtle ones; but, yeesh, there ought to be something!

I still haven’t looked up how to steep a black- and green-tea blend, so once again I split the difference. This one smells more green than black. I love the deep, rich colour of black tea; maybe it’s the addition of green or something else, I dunno, but the colour here is just straight-up brown: the brownest brown a tea ever did brown.

The flavour is hard to describe. I’ve been nyum-nyumming every sip, trying to get a feel for it, and I can’t. It has a pleasant enough flavour, but it feels two-dimensional. Nothing lingers, there’s no aftertaste—once I swallow, it’s just gone as if it were never there. This is only my second black-green blend; the other was also an Eastern Shore blend (whose name I forget) and I liked that one much better.

I’ve described green teas as nutty, or ricey, or grassy, or just kinda … green? This is the latter. There aren’t any layers here; it’s just a perfectly pleasant cup of green tea.