Twilight - Alice's Vision

You can peg the Cinnamon right away. And at first sip I like it. I didn’t know what else was in it (never would have guessed coconut) but looking at the ingredients, I’m pretty sure it was the Valentines with the Cinnamon that ultimately made me not so hot on this tea. It took me a while to drink it because I felt a bit like the tea was trying to beat my taste buds into submission. That strong and flavorful first taste just became too much sip after sip. The Cinnamon added to it makes it a bit like a tea that stood too close to chai for a while but not long enough to really get the chai flavors going. Though I can see how others would like this. I’m not a huge fan of Valentines – I find it too tart – but those that like it would probably enjoy this blend.

Valentine’s again! I smell it a lot when the leaf was dry. After I had steeped it, the chocolate and coconut smell and taste were overwhelming, in a good way. I added milk and sugar, which helped calm the mixture. I usually am not a fan of coconut tea, but this one was done very well. The cinnamon added a touch of spice. Valentine’s didn’t stand out so much to me, but there was a slight strawberry aftertaste, which was tasty.

Overall, this is my favorite Twilight SB so far. :) My fav coconut blend!

So this is a unique black tea blend, in that:
1. I would never have thought to blend chocolate covered strawberries with coconut and cinnamon and this tea has not made me think otherwise.
2. It can definitely only be steeped once – the second time the flavor has flattened out and you only taste cinnamon really.
3. It does not make a difference if it is sweetened or not, it tastes the same: I drank this hot, with no sugar, then hot with sugar. It did not seem to be any better with or without the sugar which is concerning and means I probably need a lot more sugar to taste a difference which I do not want to do.

Overall, there is a blending of flavors here, you can smell the cinnamon, and you can taste the Valentine’s, but there is something else there, a coconut to dull the two (cinnamon and Valentine’s) and blend them smoothly together. This is decent if drank hot without anything added to it.

Once it starts to cool, different flavors take over, you can taste more of the coconut as it cools and less of the Valentine’s. This becomes a sort of Valentine’s aftertaste, which I am not enjoying so much.

Then by the second steep you lose most of the coconut and are left with cinnamon and a Valentine’s aftertaste.

For these reasons, I have to “meh” this tea, it’s not bad, but it was not strong enough to hold up to my other flavored black teas.

I will continue to play with infusion times and blends with ingredients to see if I can improve the rating.