My favourite tea is no longer a tea. At the free tea seminar I went to (at the wonderful local tea store), I was introduced to "Lady Hannah" tea. Having experimented with it a lot over the last few weeks, I've decided that it can replace Stash's Peach Black Tea as my favourite (although I like them both a lot and will continue to keep both around). Lady Hannah is actually a mixture of dried fruits, in a form factor a lot like the thicker looseleaf teas. It makes a very fruity drink that still is more like a tea than anything else, but might be making some ventures in the direction of fruit punch. As it's made from real fruit, it doesn't need too much sugar to taste sweet enough for my tastes - others might not add sugar at all. In the class we learned that it also makes a good trail mix - I normally loathe trail mix (either it's too salty, something objectionable is included, or things are badly mismatched), but this stuff is an exception. It's wonderful stuff -- the only thing I don't like (that I noticed today) is that, unlike other teas, if I forget to clean it from the teapot, the individual fruits inside expand fully into fruit chunks, which then can proceed to mold (nasty!). With a bit of care, this shouldn't be an issue, and it's such a good tea it's worth that caveat.
I intend to get a decent quantity of it to bring as a visiting gift to some people I'm visiting later this month - the tradition of doing things like this is one of the things that rubbed off on me while dating Nicole. For some time I was tinking about bringing wine, but that's really generic and very subject to taste.
