Peppermint Doke Black Fusion

I was tasked with a very simple assignment – to write about holiday teas. There was only one snag. I knew nothing about holiday teas. Most of them were blends, and I rarely talked about those. That and the majority of them contained things like – oh – pumpkin flavoring. Just . . . no.

The only holiday-ish tea-related anything I had any experience with was peppermint. That was the dominant ingredient in candy canes, right? I asked myself. Of course, I couldn’t give myself an answer, and I was too lazy to Google it. Peppermint certainly smelled like candy canes (if it was any good). Then another thought occurred to me . . .

Why don’t I blend with peppermint?

A dangerous prospect, to say the least. Peppermint rarely played well with others. And even when it did cooperate with other ingredients, it had a tendency to dominate the infusion. However, there was one tea in my arsenal that could hold up to – even possibly complement – the addition of a little bit of peppermint.

Earlier in the week, I received a delivery of Doke Black Fusion in the mail. It was the third iteration of this particular tea I had tried. Before this, I field-tested the June pluck and the August offering. This was the December picking. Like the others before it, there was a character all its own.