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As you may know already, I am not a big fan of over-cinnamoned tea. Not when cinnamon drowns out everything else. This tea was included in a sampler. I would likely not seek out a tea called cinnamon anything.

This tea is ok. Strong cinnamon hit—so much so that I feel as if my taste buds have mostly been killed off after drinking half a cup. A bit of ginger. A bit of rooibos, that is to say that the spice completely masks the rooibos flavour here and rooibos is just the carrier of the cinnamon and the ginger. As I said, it is ok. Maybe fabulous if you are big fan of cinnamon.

A good fall and winter tea. I can see myself perhaps being a wee bit happier with this tea when it is snowing outside and I am inside snuggled up with a fleecy blanket.

This one of the teas that I keep coming back to when I am in the mood for rooibos, but not something too flavoured or too sweet.

I didn’t have high hopes for this cup as the dry leaf I had left only had one caramel bit, which I am not certain that my teaspoon managed to grab, in it.

Nonetheless, I steeped it at lower temperature, like I do with all rooibos and honeybush, and here I am with a lovely cup of caramel tea. There is a bit of sweetness supported by the woody heft of rooibos.

I like it. I am pleasantly surprised that this tea does not necessarily require the caramel bits in the leaf to be good. Of course, I would seek out more caramel bits if possible.

Nice.

Yes. A lovely tea.

The spice blend is an enjoyable medley of flavours. My issue with many chai teas is that the cinnamon comes through like a freight train and everything else barely trails along. That is not the case here.

The first time I drank this tea, a few days ago, I thought gingerbread. Today too, that is the association I am having: gingerbread, but more the loaf rather than the cookies. There may be the slightest bit of chocolate going on here, but I would not know it is here if I hadn’t read that it was in the ingredients. Toffee, yes, and dense ginger spice cake on that beautiful black tea base.

A lovely cup for a cold day.

Two things about tea joy.

My enjoyment of any rooibos or honeybush tea has gone up exponentially since I discovered steeping it at a lower temperature. So, boil the water, add a couple of spoonfuls of cold water, and then steep your tea. This trick saves you from the sour wood thing that happens when you use boiling water.

How much I like this tea depends on how many meringue or white chocolate bits I have in have in the spoonful I brew. More white hats, more better. This particular steeping had more hats, so better. Fewer white hats and it tastes like thin nutmeg-flavoured rooibos with a teeny bit of sweetness.

I am enjoying this cup, but it is not love.

I like this one a lot. I like that my sample has a good number of strawberry bits scattered throughout the tea. I like the smell of both the dry leaf and the steeped tea. I like the creamy strawberry flavour of the tea itself. Just the right amount of strawberry with a lovely black tea base to carry it along. I like the scent of my empty cup when my tea is far too quickly finished.

Good stuff. I could do with more of this.

It is evening, just a few hours before bedtime, and I find myself wondering what non-caffeinated tea I am going to drink.

Maple Oh Canada I think. And then, no, I decide against it. So, I rustle through my rooibos and honeybush stash.

Aha! White Chocolate Grasshopper Honeybush! Am I ready for risk-taking with an unknown—to me— tea at the moment?

I am almost certain that I am going to dislike this tea. Spearmint—-bah! Any mint, really.

I open the pouch. The dry leaf smells great: vanilla and mint. Fresh and fresh.

I boil the water. Because I don’t have a temperature-controlled teakettle, I add a couple of spoons of cold water to cool the water a bit and prevent that sour wood honeybush thing.

The steeped tea smells great: pretty much like the dry leaf smells. And the taste is right there too. The vanilla has mellowed the mint right out. The honeybush grounds the blend but stays in the background. A bit sweet, a bit herbal. Just right.

Not bad for an evening cup or two or three of a tea I was determined not to like.

This is a strange one for me.

The first two or three cups I tried of this, I loved: the perfect cold weather tea. And then, the subsequent cups, not so much. It even made me a bit queasy. Was it the apple camomile smell? the coriander? the vanilla? the creamy whatever? Whatever it was put me off and I put it away, far away to the back of my tea cupboard.

Anyway, now I am back to my first cup after so many hot months and tea distrust. The smell still makes me a bit wobbly. But the flavour is good: apple, cream, a bit of spice.

I am going to look into teas that I can dilute this with. The problem is that I am not quite sure what it is that doesn’t work for me in this tea. The sweetened yogurt smell I think. Perhaps extra camomile?

And how is it possible that my first few cups were just lovely and now that loveliness has flown.

If anyone has any suggestions for teas that I could blend this with to change it up some, I would appreciate the input.

I open the bag and spot teeny little mango squares nestled among the black tea leaves. The scent is very very subtle, but the flavour delivers. A gentle ripe mango with the slightest bit of the green tang that you get near the skin. A bit of cream on your lips after the sip. Solid medium black base. An enjoyable cup of tea, but truly, I’d like the same base with just a little bit more of everything to make my happiness complete: more mango squares, more mango flavour, more ice cream.

Blueberry. Both scent and flavour. Immediately followed by something floral and sweet—jasmine? or elderflower?

Imagine David’s Blueberry Jam but with a mild white tea rather than assertive black tea base.

I am enjoying this cup,
but the floral aspect of this tea is very likely going to embed itself in the silicone bit of my travel mug. Somehow, that worries me.

Good.

The first taste is ginger, followed up by a subtle apple sweetness. I like this tisane. I can predict that I will be drinking quite a bit of this in the evenings as the weather cools.