Plum Deluxe
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This came as a free sample in my most recent order. Unfortunately, it’s under a teaspoon, and since I only own giant mugs, I’m afraid I might have misjudged the amount of water necessary. I thought it tasted pretty decent, but I put it in the fridge overnight, and unfortunately, it was kind of weird tasting by morning. My first impression was that the flavoring was nice and rather accurate, but I wish I’d had more than a sip or two to go by!
Wow, am I in the minority here. The dry leaf smells decadent. I feel like this had no flavor, though, probably because the base teas are very light. This tasted mostly like raspberry essence, and light malt and tannins. Not much cocoa. For something called Cocoa Truffle, I would’ve expected more chocolate and body, both from the black tea and the puerh. Then again, they used a Ceylon black and those typically underwhelm me in blends.
A weird thing about this tea, and this happens sometimes with flavored teas like this one, is that the raspberry essence aggravated my lungs, like I could feel them tightening up. It’s not an allergic reaction. The best way to describe it is the feeling of inhaling a chemical irritant, like cleaning agents.
I want to love this one because the raspberry and cocoa aromas smelled so damn good but the liquor itself just didn’t have any oomph. And, yeah, the lung thing.
Preparation
This tea is the perfect combination of juicy apricot and fresh lavender. I love how many blends from Plum Deluxe include lavender! This one is so good! So refreshing and lovely warm or cold. My ounce of this only made a few cups, and if their prices were more reasonable, I would certainly order more.
Hmm this reminds me of a cherry tea from Adagio that I didn’t enjoy. There’s just something about cherry flavoring that for some reason tastes chalky, artificial, and weird to me. I don’t taste any almond sadly. I enjoyed this tea a bit more in subsequent cups, though it was always too tart, and the only flavor I ever got from it was cherry.
STTB
I finished this off because there wasn’t enough left (~0.5 tsp) after I removed my 1 tsp so I just used it all.
The oolong here is lightly roasty, but not strong by any means. There is some vague stone fruit flavours, however I didn’t get any distinctly mango flavours. It was quite subtle but still enjoyable. I didn’t find this very exciting – nothing remarkable – but still nice to try.
Flavors: Fruity, Smooth
The flavor here is mostly herbaceous sage. Definitely no sugar for this one. I had some veeeery sweet pancakes, and this was immediately the tea that I wanted to wash them down. Sage in tea can just be so refreshing! And there are other supporting ingredients in here, but I can’t tell what.
This has that same herbaceousness I’ve come to expect from butterfly pea flower. Most of the flavor is dominated by some light fruitiness combined with the slightly unpleasant butterfly pea. It’s okay, but not better than other teas of this variety. Most of the blend was flowers, and it could have been much more balanced. I wish it were just a little flower for the color while focusing more on the fruit flavor. The main fruit I taste is lemon.
The flavor is a little artificial, but I still enjoy it in most sips. I taste a nice fresh pear. I also taste some light spices that go very well with the pear. I also get some alcohol from the flavoring. It’s not my favorite pear tea, but it’s definitely grown on me since my first cup of it. The resteep is pretty decent too. I wish the spices were a little stronger, but they really are nice with the pear.
The flavor here is pretty mild. It’s definitely lightly orange and maybe a touch of spice. The resteep was pretty tasty as well. A light, gentle tea. I would have preferred bolder flavors, but this was nice. The sample didn’t have as much tea in it as other samples, so perhaps this was a little underleafed.
This tea came as a free sample in two different Plum Deluxe orders, so I steeped them both up today. The flavor is pretty nice. Light spices on a mild black tea. A little bit sweet and desserty. Not too appley, which I was fine with since I don’t love apple spice teas. I enjoyed this one much more than anticipated! Its rebrew randomly tasted like snickerdoodles! I’m not sure why I ended up with stronger spices in the resteep!
Yet another tea from Shae…and this may be my favorite of the bunch so far! Chocolate-flavored tea blends can be pretty hit and miss for me, but this one is absolutely delicious. Both the chocolate and raspberry flavors are coming through clearly and the base tea has a nice earthy richness that compliments the dark chocolate perfectly without any of the funkiness you sometimes get with puerh blends. It’s even better with a splash of milk!
Flavors: Dark Chocolate, Earth, Jam, Raspberry
Preparation
This tea is unbelievably good. The coconut and lavender are both so bright and refreshing. I had this cold, and I savored each sip. If it weren’t so expensive, I would make pitchers and pitchers of it. It’s just so well-balanced and delicious. Its second steep is just as delicious as its first. The third cold steep gets a little tangy, but still tasty enough to drink. Definitely a favorite. Not chai at all though. Just coconut and lavender.
A new Plum Deluxe favorite! This is a delicious blend of bergamot and fruity strawberries. I love everything about it. It steeps a strong, dark brew with bold flavors. Not too overwhelming on the bergamot either, which I appreciate. I love bergamot, but if it’s too strong I’ve noticed it gives me a bit of a headache.
Second Steep
8 ounces water + 212 degrees + 20 minutes
Unfortunately, this didn’t make for a satisfying resteep at all. It’s very lightly flavored, very lightly flavored, and isn’t really worth the extra time when I could be drinking a fresh cup of something else. But now I know!
This is my “something new” for Mastress Alita’s A June Wedding sipdown prompt.
Side Note No. 1 – I’ve been spending some time over on Litsy and Goodreads this week. Does anyone have accounts there? I’d love to follow to see what everyone’s reading with their tea.
Side Note No. 2 – I’m having a conflict of conscience. All my life I’ve added two spaces after each period. That’s the rules! My fingers automatically hit the spacebar twice but lately the two spaces look so weird. So I delete a space. But that looks weird too. Why is this?! So now all my paragraphs and sentences are inconsistent – one space here, two spaces there. It’s making me uncomfortable. I did look on trusty Google and apparently the APA (which is the formatting/style guide I learned and used growing up) was the only one that recommended, nay demanded, two spaces after a period. Even they gave it up in 2019 and said that one space is sufficient. How do I retrain my fingers after over twenty years of double-tapping that spacebar? A challenge, indeed…
Side Note No. 3 – Is Steepster broken again? Good grief.
Edit – My note posted to the dashboard, so maybe it’s just that I’m the only one having tea today.
Flavors: Bergamot, Strawberry, Vanilla
Preparation
Ehhm, I guess not many people wrote notes today. And interesting that APA suggests two spaces — Czech system bans more than one space!
As of Goodreads, unfortunately I use Czech alternative to keep track of my read books. If I only don’t have to read the coursebooks recently!
Side notes: I use LibraryThing for literary purposes, and it took years for me to break the two spaces habit. Mrs. Ping, my high school business teacher, drilled that one deep into my DNA!
I don’t use Litsy, but I’m Veronica Price on GR. I don’t write many reviews, but I do track most of my reading over there. I’d love to see what you’re reading. Checking out people’s bookshelves (real or digital) is one of my favorite things!
I think I read somewhere that our new technology already justifies the spacing of the text. (My mom actually learned to run an ABDick offset printer way back when and taught me what justification was in printing.) This is why two spaces are no longer necessary, the article said, and I think if you hit the spacebar twice, Apple products automatically put a period and capitalize the next letter.
Martin – I hope you’ll share any good reads with us once your studying is done! What types of books do you like to read for fun?
It’s good to hear I’m not alone in my double spacing! I suppose I need to start trying to break the habit. Very interesting about the article on justification, ashmanra, though I don’t own any Apple products so I’ll be hitting that backspace until I can retrain my fingers. I am still trying to figure out LibraryThing, gmathis, but I found a few really great threads there yesterday on sociology and religion so I will persist. I added my goodreads profile in my Steepster bio since I couldn’t find you, Veronica – or rather, I found about 16 of “you” and I don’t know which is the right Veronica Price. :) I don’t have much there yet, still adding books as I think of them.
LibraryThing has a monthly early reviewer giveaway (both print and ebooks); costs nothing to throw your hat into the raffle basket except your agreement to write a review of at least 25 words. (I can take 25 words just clearing my throat!)
@gmathis – The raffle sounds like fun! I’ll definitely check it out, thank you. :)
@Veronica – I’m so glad you found me! I loved The Historian. I let a friend read my copy several years back, so I just need to go ahead and get another one. I don’t usually re-read books, but that’s one I would definitely read again.
Shae: I don’t have a particular favourite style or/and authors. I am now in one third of The Saxon Stories by Bernard Cornwell, so I would like to finish this series first. I do like historical novels though! But I read a few autobiographies, some serious and real-based books. Some funny books and lighthearted ones too. Just I do like it or not… no matter what genre is. I used to read lots of scifi as well.
Martin – this is the book series that the Netflix show is based on, yes? I’m currently in the middle of the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon, also historical fiction/sci-fi (time travel). I’ve been reading some light books in-between, but I’m not ready to start another series yet. This one looks good though!
Indeed it is! It was produced by BBC but abadonned then. Netflix decided to continue, but I haven’t seen single episode yet; I am waiting to finish the books first. I have read The Fort from same author when I was in Finland and that probably caused I like historical novels. There is eachyear a reading challenge but never read all 20 books that I should. Unfortunately, the time is (hopefully was) the trouble!