WOW! This tea is a mean badass! It’s drinking liquid pepper! Dry tea looks beautiful, shreds of guayusa with specks of bright red peppers. I can smell cinnamon, and pepper, and sniffing the tea made me sneeze for three or four times immediately! Liquid is of light body, it goes down easily, and the colour is brown. Steeped tea vaguely smells of, but it does not taste like, cinnamon (which I was afraid of – every time I was looking forward to trying some really hot, spicy tea it ended up being all cinnamon-y). You better prepare your throat for a little shock before the first sip. Because you will feel every sip of this tea all the way to your stomach. It’s a non-compromising, full-bodied taste of pure cayenne, slightly dried and refined. It is not insulting to the palate, at least not mine, but I belong to the type of people who are always on the search for ever hotter treat to their tastebuds. The hotness lingers on the palate long after you swallow. This is my first guayusa so I’m not sure what special qualities to appreciate in it; as to caffeine I’m drinking this early in the morning, so we’ll see how much caffein-ized I feel later in the day. I would definitely pair this tea with some food.
