Part 1 of a 5 part sampler I got from Kusmi (discovered at the Bi Rite Market in San Francisco). I was pretty excited to find these locally, however they do not carry the large size of the tins in the store, only teabags.
This tea is not for the faint of heart nor the faint of scent. If you hold the tins to your nose you can smell the scent very strongly! Open them up and get a whiff of perfume! yowza…
We picked this particular one to try this morning based on the recommendation of one of the store’s employees. It is a strong and smooth black tea but predominately all you taste here is the spices. Smells very much like root beer! It is such an interesting tea… I am tasting a lot of clove here in addition to citrus and bergamot. The bergamot is nice and subtle and does not provide the same amount of bergamot as an Earl Grey. I am getting a lot of citrus but perhaps not that much vanilla.
I did try steeping it twice, the second steep was weaker and with a lot less perfume and also the citrus flavors are coming though more here so I am not enjoying steep #2 quite as much.
Overall I quite liked this but I suspect I will like a few of the other ones better since I am not a huge fan of grapefruit in tea usually. I also enjoyed this little piece of history on the Kusmi tea company:
http://www.us.kusmitea.com/en/history/i111/information.html
