Tea tasting: Tea Forté's Tupelo Honey Fig

I've been trying to finish off the tea I have before acquiring any new tea, hence the radio silence for a bit.  However, in the midst of today's awful weather, I did manage to find my white tea sampler and try something new: Tea Forté's Tupelo Honey Fig White Tea.

Tupelo honey is a type of honey made from specific trees (white tupelo trees) that bloom in the Southeastern U.S.   Apparently it's considered a gourmet honey.  As with everything, you can find it for sale on the internet (http://www.teavana.com/us/en/tea/tea-sweeteners/tupelo-honey-011046728.html).

This is a very very lightly sweet tea, with a strong minty and herbal finish.  The sweetness is definitely the sweetness of honey, not sugar (and certainly not the taste abomination that is high fructose corn syrup).  There's a smokey quality to the sweetness, if that makes any sense.   In addition to fig and the honey, the tisane contains licorice root, fennel, myrtle and peppermint, all of which combine to make a fascinatingly complex flavor.    To be honest, I really don't taste fig at all amid all of the other stuff going on.

This is not a delicate white tea.  Because it's got strong flavors, I tried icing some of it, which worked surprisingly well.   If I were to plan on serving it iced, I'd make sure to have fresh mint to add to the glasses.