Not sure what possessed me to buy this one. I do like cinnamon but it’s a sort of a second or even third tier flavor for me behind chocolate, nuts, fruits and vanilla. I think I probably thought it would be interesting to taste a tea where the primary flavor was cinnamon (without any others in the mix) and also to see how Kusmi managed this one.
Since I originally put this into my shopping cart, though, I’ve had two cinnamon black teas, so curiosity 1 has been satisfied. That leaves me with curiosity 2.
In the tin, the cinnamon smell is rather subdued. It isn’t red hot strong like the H&S, and it isn’t cinnamon stick strong like the Adagio. It’s really just a hint, but a nice one. The tea’s aroma is a similar, subdued cinnamon.
Interestingly, this seems to me to be one flavored black tea where less really is more. Though I found the various Kusmi chocolates and the bourbon vanilla too quiet and disappointing, I prefer the less in-your-face cinnamon flavor of this to the Adagio by quite a margin.
Like the Adagio, it’s a more herbal version of a cinnamon than the H&S, and it doesn’t have a candy sweetness. Unlike the Adagio, the tea seems to be steeped in a cinnamon fragrance, rather than to be a base to which cinnamon has been glommed on heavy handedly. It works.
It may even work, for some purposes, as well or better than the H&S (a much stronger flavor, a much sweeter flavor, a much candier flavor). It really depends, I suppose, on what you are looking for in a cinnamon black tea and since I tend to like stronger flavors I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this.
Still not sure I’d buy more than one cinnamon tea for the permanent collection, but if I did, this would be a contender.
