Christmas Food and Tea Pairing

Who doesn’t love a good cuppa with their favourite snack, or a tea to ease down a large meal? In this post we’ll help you find tea pairings for your Christmas food and snacks.

Mince Pie + Christmas Pudding

The best thing to stand up to the rich spiced flavours of a mince pie is our Christmas blend, with complementing spices and refreshing orange to balance out the richness of the mince pie. Perfect to go with Christmas pudding too.

Panettone

With Panettoni we recommend Yunnan Golden Tips. This is a sweet, fruity, almost jammy black tea from China. Delicate compared to more familiar black teas from India, its sweetness pairs well with bread, while it’s more jammy notes with bring out the fruits in your Panettoni.

Roasted Chestnuts

Roasted chestnuts are one of my favourite Christmas comfort foods. The smell of them roasting brings back nostalgic Christmas eve memories. I would pair them with pre-rain Longjing, a sweet and nutty, almost biscuity green tea from China.

Chocolate

Our Plum Muscatel is the perfect pairing for dark chocolate. This tea is one of my favourites of this year. It’s a second flush Darjeeling from the Japanese Yabukita cultivar. It has lovely notes of plum and pomegranate, alongside deeper fruity dark chocolate flavours.

Cheese

For pairing with a cheeseboard I would choose a fruity first-flush Darjeeling. Jethi Kupi, for example has lovely hits of passion fruit and dried apricot that would complement many cheeses.

With Christmas Dinner

If you’re avoiding wine this year, or just want something a little different, try cold infused white tea or Japanese Kukicha. Put a teaspoon of tea leaves into a litre of water and pop it in the fridge overnight. It makes a sweet and refreshing cold tea to put in your wine glass with dinner.

After Christmas Dinner

For after Christmas dinner go with Duchess Grey or The Orangery. The citrus will cut through the heavy dinner and cleanse your palate for pudding.