When Frank announced this tea, I had to buy it, even though I had only tried one other tea of his and didn’t have a great experience with it. But pumpkin! And cheesecake! I love love love anything pumpkin this time of year, so pumpkin tea was a must have. To be perfectly honest, I’m not expecting much from this tea based on some of the reviews and my own experiences with Pancake Breakfast, but I had to try. Inspired by my low-temp steep on the Kusmi Caramel tea the other day, I ratcheted this one down to see if I could keep the black tea from overwhelming the flavors.
The smell of the dried leaf is really pumpkin-pie spicey. I get lots of cinnamon and clove and some ginger and nutmeg. The pumpkin aroma I can pick up at times through the spice. Steeped, the black tea has come forward, as expected, BUT there is still a good helping of spicy pumpkin aroma in the steeped tea. I am hopeful! That clove is certainly killer in the aroma. The good news is that I don’t just get black tea from this one. The bad news is that all I seem to get is intense spiciness. I feel like the spices are a bit overdone in this one… I’m getting the pungent spice plus that dusty flavor that you get if you eat too much dried ground spice. And remarkably I’m still getting a hint of bitterness with the quite low steeping temp, but it almost seems bitter from too many spices. Yeah I’m going to have to cut this one with something for it to be drinkable for me (and I like Harney’s Hot Cinnamon Spice, so I’m not afraid of spicey teas!). I don’t get really any other flavors but the spices here. Oh well.
