I had to try this one! The yunnan base from Nature’s Tea Leaf is one of my favorites (though the flavor profile does seem like it would be a better match for their perfect Chocolate Midnight Black). The picture makes it look like there are only orange slices in this, but they are cinnamon chunks! I let the water cool too long when I noticed the cinnamon chunks when I was pouring this into my infuser. Cinnamon tastes best with boiling water. My bag didn’t have too many oranges, but I’m okay with that! Rather than have apple pieces, the tea is actually infused with apple flavor. After four minutes steeping, this certainly tastes like cider! I do wish the apple flavor was sweeter, otherwise the black tea itself would make it taste more like some kind of apple dessert — like one of those whole apples wrapped in a pastry and baked. I’d compare the apple flavoring to Della Terra’s Caramel Candy Apple, but not the other apple teas I’ve tried from DT — just that one. (I guess they use different apple flavors?) The yunnan wasn’t terribly pronounced here… as I suspected, it really fits with the chocolate blend. It’s still great though! The second steep was ALL cloves! No apple, no cinnamon, no black tea. It was very weird, and I had it at boiling this time. I don’t think I’ll steep this twice the next time. I can’t believe there is a black tea that doesn’t hold to two steeps…. unless you really really like cloves! I liked the first steep anyway. (I’ll just go for one steep longer than four minutes next time.) It’s a nice spicy apple blend that would be great on an autumn or winter day. However, I could drink their Chocolate Midnight black tea EVERY day of the year.
