With Holiday Teas comes Holiday Sample Packs! All 5 holiday Christmas teas, including:
-Candy Apple
-Candy Cane
-Gingerbread
-Pum-Pum-Pumpkin Spice
-Yukina's Healing Touch
ALL TEA SAMPLES COME PRE-BAGGED AND READY FOR BREWING
My first order from Dragon's Treasure included a couple of Sample Packs - including this Holiday one, as it is mostly black teas (familiarity). Without prior reference, there is always fear of the dreaded scented candle in a mug... and fortunately, none of these teas are overpowering with added spices - allowing the tea itself to shine through.
I started with the PumPumPumkin, and braced for overpowering spice - but there was none. It was more a nice black tea with a hint of spice. As I didn't expect that, my initial reaction was actually desiring a bit more spice (I'll be interested to see if I still feel that way on the next bag). As I learned, these teas rebrew beautifully, and I soon discovered this makes a fantastic milk tea.
Now that I knew what to expect, I moved on to the Candy Cane. Again a nice black tea with a hint of peppermint / candy cane.
Next up: Gingerbread. For me, gingerbread is molasses, which is not an ingredient - so you get the warm ginger/cinnamon spices. This makes an absolutely awesome milk tea. And because it rebrews so well so many times, I enjoyed the heck out of this one all day. Fantastic.
Candy Apple was the first one that had more prominent spice levels. Still not overpowering and definitely enjoyable.
Finally was the Yukina's Healing Touch, which I believe is my first white tea also. Much more spice here, and absolutely wonderful. The blend of flavors were all perfect. Really really great.
So on first pass for me, the Gingerbread and Yukina's would have to be standouts. Really great... And I'm looking forward for more Gingerbread and PumPumPumpkin as milk teas. And the Candy Apple and Candy Cane were also good. (On teabags 2/3, I'll see if I would prefer more spice in the Pumpkin, Gingerbread, and CandyCane - or if I think milder is better. Again, it might just be that I wasn't sure what to expect initially.)
Conclusion: All of these are great teas. This was a great choice for me, and I definitely will be ordering this holiday sample pack again in the future. I've never had (store bought packaged) teas rebrew this strongly before - wow! And do not fear that the spices will overpower the tea - because they are very mild.
(sorry this reads like a rambling HS book report. I'll do better next time.. lol)