Saw this tea at my local Caribou Coffee shop about 6 months ago, and got excited — it sounded wonderful from the description. The metal tin contains 20 sachets, so at $7.99 a tin it wasn’t cheap. When I opened the tin, I was overwhelmed by the intense cinnamon and cloves smell. And not overwhelmed in a good way. It was absolutely overpowering, and I couldn’t smell any orange peel in there because it smelled like 90% cinnamon and 10% cloves. No “tea” smell whatsoever, though you can see the semi-broken leaves. The sachets are of a high quality, but when I tried to steep the tea, it came out bitter, overpoweringly cinnamon, and hot on the tongue (spicy and a bit numbing from the cloves). Again, not a good sensation. My sister tried to smell the contents of the tin and couldn’t stop sneezing, because it was too strong. I never made more than that one cup with the tea… instead, I emptied the sachets into a decorative bowl and used it as a potpourri/room freshener in our guest bathroom. That was six months ago, and I can still smell the cinnamon and cloves in the dish — I bet if I tried to make a cup from the six-month-old, dusty leaves now, it would still be too strong. Overall, nasty… bitter, way too much cinnamon and clove, NOT recommended. Possibly one of the worst teas I have ever had, in fact. (Maybe this explains why Caribou doesn’t have “Tea” in their name.)
190 °F / 87 °C
3 min, 30 sec
