Original Spice Tea Blend

Finishing up my stash of this from last year. This was one of my first non-Teavana tea purchases because it smelled like their white chai. This tea screams Christmas. I know they have a Christmas tea (that they sell all year round), but this really should be it instead (disclaimer: I’ve never had the other one). This tea is bold and spicy. A little goes a long way here and I find that I can’t drink this for too many days in a row or my tongue gets a little tingly (and not in a fun way) from the cinnamon in it. The second brew is almost better than the first since you’re not socked in the mouth by cinnamon.

This tea WILL leave a very stubborn lingering scent in any tin you use so proceed with caution there unless you plan to stock this forever. Seriously, I’ve washed the tin 3+ times now, let it sit with a baking soda paste overnight, and had dry baking soda in it for at least 2 weeks now and I can still smell spice. Almost tempted to keep buying it just so I can use that tin again but it’s just too strong for me much of the year.

One of the last, if not the last, as yet untasted Todd & Holland black tea samples. I think I found them all. At one point I had all my sample packets lined up in rows in shoebox sized plastic containers, but I liberated those to store my unrefrigerated Nutrisystem food. When I did that, the packets mixed in with the rest of my tea stash in an unhelpfully disorganized way. I thought I’d found them all, then found this. It’s possible there’s a straggler out there somewhere.

In the packet, the tea smells mostly of cinnamon with a little orange around the edges. The cinnamon is strong — almost eyewateringly so — and reminds me of red hots, or cinnamon toothpicks.

Cinnamon, clove, orange… it’s the Constant Comment flavor profile in the ingredients, essentially. As I’ve mentioned before, I have a soft spot for Constant Comment. The difference here is the flavor balance. I can’t really smell or taste the clove, and I can smell the orange but I can’t really taste it.

It makes a rust-colored, clear liquor that smells strongly of cinnamon. With the heat of the water, it’s less like red hots and more like a cinnamon roll.

The flavor is surprisingly sweet, sweeter than I would have anticipated from the aroma.

This is basically the Todd & Holland version of Harney’s Hot Cinnamon Spice. I haven’t had that in a while, but reading my description of it in an old tasting note, that’s pretty much the same flavor I’m tasting here. Sweet-hot cinnamon.

Harney’s gets points for being direct about it in the name, but this is a good cinnamon tea. It’s a little less hefty than I remembered the Harney being, which can be good or bad depending on one’s mood at the moment.