Sugar Plum

🎄Some Christmas teas arrive with cinnamon, cloves, and a great deal of noise. Sugar Plum prefers to make an entrance. Elegant, fruity, delicately floral, and naturally sweetened with Stevia Leaf, this Christmas blend begins far from snowy winter windows, among the green hills of Kandy, Sri Lanka, where some of Ceylon’s most historic tea country can be found.

The story of Ceylon tea is inseparable from Kandy. Commercial tea cultivation in Sri Lanka began there in 1867, when Scottish planter James Taylor established a 19-acre tea planting at Loolecondera Estate. By 1873, the first small shipment of Ceylon tea had reached London, and in 1883 the first public Colombo Tea Auction was held. Today, the Kandy tea-growing region is considered medium-grown tea country, generally sitting between about 2,000 and 4,000 feet in elevation. Teas from the region are known for richly colored copper-mahogany liquor and a full, malty character. It is from this storied landscape that we get the foundation for our Sugar Plum Christmas Tea: Nayapane Estate FBOP Ceylon black tea.

Nayapane Estate sits near Pussellawa in the central highlands of the Kandy region at roughly 3,000 feet. Its FBOP produces a beautiful bright reddish infusion with a mellow character, medium body, slight maltiness, and some pleasant astringency. FBOP stands for Flowery Broken Orange Pekoe, a black-tea leaf grade. Our own description of the Nayapane Estate Sri Lanka FBOP notes its slightly wiry, twisted broken leaves, often dotted with silvery tips, and the mellow, flavorful reddish cup they produce. In other words, it gives us exactly what we want beneath all those sugar-plum dreams: a proper cup of Ceylon tea with enough character to hold its own.

And then…Christmas wanders into the apothecary.

We take that beautiful Ceylon black tea and add Stevia Leaf, Rose, and Sugar Plum, transforming its deeper tea character into something softer, sweeter, and deliciously festive. The Sugar Plum brings the playful fruitiness that gives this blend its name, while Rose adds an old-fashioned floral grace that seems especially at home at Christmastime. Stevia Leaf contributes sweetness, rounding the cup without taking away the personality of the Ceylon tea underneath. The result is a lovely contrast. The Nayapane Estate tea is mellow, full, and slightly malty. Then the sugar-plum character dances across it with fruity sweetness while Rose floats quietly through the cup with its delicate floral aroma.  It’s festive without being another heavily spiced Christmas tea. It’s sweet without forgetting that it’s tea. And it’s just whimsical enough to make us think someone at the Steep Me apothecary has been reading The Night Before Christmas again.

Mellow Ceylon Black Tea • Sweet Sugar Plum • Delicate Rose • Gentle Natural Sweetness • Fruity • Floral • Festive

This is the cup for twinkling Christmas lights, beautifully wrapped presents, old-fashioned candy dishes, and visions of sugar plums dancing through your head. And perhaps that’s what we love most about Sugar Plum Christmas Tea. Underneath all the Christmas whimsy is a beautiful Ceylon black tea with more than a century and a half of tea history behind the region from which it comes. But once it reaches our apothecary? We add the sugar plums. Because some Christmas traditions deserve to be steeped. 🎄🫖✨