After looking for weeks, I finally found Nutcracker Sweet on Christmas Eve! The description, which I’d read online, fascinated me, so I was very happy to have found it. Just had my first mug of it today. The directions suggest a steeping time of 3 to 5 minutes, so I went with 5 and added a little sugar. Based on the description of the tea, I thought it would taste pretty strong since black tea can be strong when steeped that long and cinnamon tends to be very powerful in tea. To my surprise, it’s quite mild. Very drinkable and does not need milk to smooth it out. The black tea flavor takes a back seat to the vanilla, which is just fine with me since I’ve been looking for a nice vanilla tea. Funny that I think this tea tastes more like vanilla than Bigelow French Vanilla or Carrington French Vanilla!
The tea supposedly also tastes like cinnamon and other spices, but I honestly could not detect any of them. Maybe I can taste them the teeniest, tiniest bit and they just add a special, unidentifiable something. While I would prefer if I could taste a LITTLE bit of cinnamon, I quite like the tea as is. It smells and tastes like vanilla brown sugar to me. YUM. Glad I found this one and I’m sure I’ll have no problem finishing the box. I gave 2 bags to my mother-in-law before I had a chance to taste it (gave her some of all my teas to try) so I’m curious about what she’ll think of it.
