52teas.com

First, a quick note: to our subscribers and customers who have placed orders in the last couple of weeks, I apologize. We ran out of pouches, and my pouch supplier decided to take an extended holiday vacation. I finally got more pouches tonight (after failing to tell my vendor we had moved and having them shipped to the wrong address… grrr.) In any event, the plan is to get all of the orders caught up tomorrow, including our subscribers, who might get two or three pouches in one shipment to get us caught up. Again, I apologize. Now to the tea of the week–

This week’s tea is proof positive that being a pest sometimes pays off. There’s good reason why some of our customers have started referring to me as “the Willy Wonka of tea”. I enjoy creating bold new flavors, stuff that no one has ever done before. I couldn’t possibly accomplish this without the help of several people, most notably, our natural flavors suppliers. One of whom, I don’t mind admitting, I have a terrible man-crush on.

He is a genius in his field and provides probably 90% of our flavors. But what I love best about him is that occasionally I can come to him with a crazy idea for a new flavor and he will make it for me. Sometimes (like when I asked him to create a bacon flavor), he tells me I’m crazy and I have to track down an alternative, but many times he has helped me out. I know that larger companies that actually have money to spend will spend tens of thousands of dollars for his assistance in creating a new proprietary flavor profile, but he knows I don’t have the budget for that and he helps me out anyway. Maybe he sees in me, as I see in him, a fellow mad scientist. Whatever the reason, I am grateful.

For this week’s tea, he created a natural oatmeal flavoring, which I had been dreaming about for a while, so I could introduce you to this week’s tea of the week: Oatmeal Raisin Cookie Black Tea, with rolled oats, plump raisins and natural flavors including oatmeal and touches of brown sugar, raisin, and butter (and yes, it’s all vegan, for our vegan friends).

I don’t want to toot my own horn too much here, but I think this is going to knock your socks off. It is truly stunning. Get yours while they last.

Our Tea of the Week for the week of January 2, 2012

Just $8.99 for 1.75oz. with FREE shipping to the US!