Marks & Spencer – Christmas Spiced Tea
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It’s Christmas Time at Tea Fancier Towers! Obviously it’s far too early but Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without Christmas starting too early every year. I have a clutch of festive themed teas to get through before the end of November because once we hit December the first, I’m going to be fully distracted by my Bird & Blend Advent Calendar.
I’m starting with Marks & Spencer’s Christmas Spiced Tea because Marks & Spencer is probably the Christmassiest shop on the high street. Unless it’s John Lewis. Or Argos.
Christmas Spiced Tea is an odd fellow, actually. It’s a spiced tea that doesn’t contain any of the usual spice lineup. There’s no ginger, cinnamon or cardamom in here. Instead we get allspice (which, despite its name, is not all the spices) and – worryingly – liquorice.
I’m not liquorice’s biggest fan when it turns up as a tea ingredient (although I am perfectly happy to encounter it in other contexts). Luckily, the liquorice doesn’t overpower the taste of the tea. (Unless you leave it to to go a bit cold and then the liquorice completely takes over. So I don’t advise that you do that. Obviously I don’t advise that you ever accidentally let your tea go cold. Getting distracted by something else when you’re supposed to be drinking tea is a sure sign that something has gone very wrong with your priorities in life.)
This tea contains black tea, cassia bark, liquorice root, allspice, dried apples and orange peel and it’s the orange that’s the real star of the show. It overwhelms the black tea but Marks & Spencer’s tea – in my experience – isn’t particularly great so that isn’t a bad thing.
It’s a perfectly nice tea, and I’ll cheerfully finish off the box by the end of the year, but it feels a bit perfunctory somehow. A sort of “Yeah, that will do” festive tick-box exercise so that they have something to include in their Christmas hampers.
Considering Marks’ other festive offerings – like Christmas gins in illuminated bottles and literally a billion Percy Pig related food gifts – their festive tea offering seems a bit paltry.
Come on Marks, how about you really push the boat out tea-wise next year? I want tea that tastes like chocolate shortbread and porcine gummy sweets and comes in a glittery snow globe tea caddy that plays “I wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day” on a loop.
Today’s featured book is Christmas Stories by Charles Dickens. He was quite fond of Christmas, you know.
