Market Spice Tea

Second tea of the morning……

I am on the fence with this one. It does remind me of Harney’s Hot Cinnamon Spice, but with more of an orange note. It is sweet without any addition of sweetener, and the cinnamon is a little lighter than the Harney version. The orange is nice.

I am a little unsettled by this tea, though. The dry leaf looks as if it is covered in oil. I am pretty sure it is the flavoring oil, but in all my flavored tea drinking, I have only experienced one flavor that made the tea look oily and this is it. There is even a residue in the bottom of the bag…..and I transferred it into a heavier zip pouch when I opened it, so this is not even the original packaging. It had to be transferred into something because it came in clear cellophane without any means of resealing. So, we are not talking about just a little glisten of oilyness…it is drenched. The look of all that oil kind of makes me lose interest, and even turns my stomach a little. I will probably dump out most of this pot, just because the look of the leaf is so yucky (for lack of a better descriptor!) I experienced something similar with the green version. Tastes good, but the dry leaf looks ick. I did send an email asking of this was normal for this flavor, and they did say it was. (I do have to commend the quickness of the response, though. It was lightening fast!)

I am not sad I tried this. I always would have wondered. If it did not look so oily, I am sure it would be a winner for me. I do like the more prominent orange flavor.

Usual teapot method. No additions.

Many, many thanks to Kashyap for this tea!!!

As a Hot Cinnamon Spice fanatic, I was really looking forward to trying this tea. I am finding that the main difference is that it has an utterly delicious candied orange peel flavor! It has the cinnamon verging on red hots, enjoyable tea base, but that candied orange peel (vs not all that pronounced plainish orange peel in HCS) is the distinctive factor for me. I love it! I am having that Empty Cup Syndrome where I keep picking up my empty cup to see if maybe there is a little more tea in there even though I know there is not (this after having two cups already!). I think I shall have another cup this afternoon!

What a treat! Thanks once again Kashyap! D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S!!!!!!!

There is one spice in the world that will always make me smile and that I will always crave…. dum dum dum CINNAMON! gah! i love cinnamon anything and everything so perhaps that is why my rating for this tea is a bit biased. Nonetheless I must say that this tea is a delicious dessert for the day! No sweetening needed because it is naturally so sweet… And let me tell you if you smell the box well you are going to get a big strong whiff of a cinnamon stick… in a good way.

Although I loved the smell, which was reminiscent of the holidays, and I loved the packaging, I think that the quality of the leaves could have been better. But all in all it was the perfect afternoon cup

This is the cup I made for the bf! He adores cinnamon teas, as does my dad. It seems to be a trait in the men in my life—for example, I think Smaug is probably both of their favorite teas. I like cinnamon in moderation, but strong cinnamon teas aren’t usually my thing, but I grabbed some of this one from the Traveling Tea Box (B) for my boys!

This is…. holy cow, strong cinnamon! Tongue-numbing, mouth-tingling cinnamon. Hot and spicy cinnamon! The orange is a nice background for it, but oh man is this a strongly flavored tea. But if cinnamon is your thing, this is the tea for you!

HOLY MOSES!

This is the most aromatic flavored tea I have ever come across and I mean EVER come across!

I didn’t reread these reviews before infusing and did my ‘normal’ loose leaf amount about 2 Tbs. I found it to be WAY TOO SWEET and WAY TOO SPICEY and WAY TOO HARSH. But…I really want to like this. For now…I am not rating that wicked experience and am going to try this again but with 1 tsp instead.

I gave it a number of points equal to the sips I could manage.

It’s like drinking liquid Red Hots with a dash of overly sweet potpourri thrown in.

This is not pleasant and just the smell is making me nauseous.

Thanks to a weird sleeping schedule this weekend I am up right now, so I thought I’d try one of the teas TeaEqualsBliss sent me (whilst playing Bulletstorm on my xbox). This one has smelled up the box with its delicious cinnamon smell so I’m diving right in. It brews up cinnamony strong – one of my favorite smells – and tastes as spicy as it smells. The base tea is decent, but doesn’t shine through over the cinnamon.

I would seem that with this tea, you either love it or hate it. I happen to love it. I tried it the first time several years ago when a friend of mine who lives in Seattle sent me some. Since then, I have tried many cinnamon citrus blends but none come close to this one in my opinion. This one is the best. It is like drinking liquefied red hots with a splash of orange in there! Yum!

I often refer to Stash’s Orange Spice tea as my ‘first love’ when it comes to tea. Tea has always been good, but the pairing of the cinnamon and orange with black tea was the first tea that I ever really wanted. Like deep-seeded cravings kind of want. I moved on to the more bitter bergamot flavor of an Earl Grey later on in life, and it has always felt more of a staple than the Orange Spice. Orange Spice isn’t something you drink every day… it’s a treat. It’s special.

Years go by, and here I am getting all excited about loose tea. A coworker mentions something about MarketSpice, and I kind of dismiss it… because I think I knew what she was talking about, and it wasn’t what I was looking for.

I had no idea what she was talking about, and it was exactly what I was looking for. I apologized to her later.

The MarketSpice tea is similar to the Orange Spice tea in it’s flavor combination, but completely different in it’s execution. It’s like everything I love about Orange Spice, but notched up to 11.

The MarketSpice has very powerful flavoring of cinnamon (cassia), and it’s wonderful. The strength of the cinnamon is worth calling out specifically. The potency is such that when I first start drinking a new pot of this tea, my tongue goes a little tingly from the stimulation.

The orange is a much more solid flavor in this tea than most others (sorry, Stash!). It’s so far been consistently sweet as well, without a trace of that rind-y flavor that I’ve had in other teas. Another gold star for MarketSpice.

I’m also very impressed with pricing from MarketSpice the company. Most of their black teas run just above $1/oz, which is very reasonable. It’s an easy store to make a staple.

I absolutely love this tea, and will always have it handy. However, there are a few warnings that I would give others regarding this tea.

1) It is very sweet. Cinnamon and Orange both lend themselves to a dessert-level of sweetness, and the sheer power of these flavors in this blend lead to a very sweet tea.

2) With all that sweetness and flavor, the black tea really doesn’t have much room to shine. It’s there, somewhere, but man is it subtle. For people that prefer their black tea a little more prevalent, I wouldn’t be able to honestly recommend this tea.

But I recommend it to everyone else. I even recommended it to myself for a second steeping in a second pot tonight. Nom nom nom.

I picked this up on a recommendation, and I was a little worried when I read the reviews here, especially after I opened the jar and found the scent to be a bit overwhelmingly orangey.

Luckily, the flavor is not nearly as strong as the scent. There are still undertones of orange, but the cinnamon is what really stands out. It’s delicious! The only real problem I found was that it’s hard to taste the actual tea under the spices and orange. Still, I can see this becoming one of my favorite teas.

I’m glad I checked the ratings here first, though; this is not a tea that needs to be sweetened at all.

So yum, when it is raining and your throat is scratchy. Just have to be in the mood for this one. Sweet-hot cinnamon….mmmmmmm. Sometimes I feel it is an old ladies tea – due to only old ladies ask for it when I owned my stores…so DUB me an OLD LADY.

I just about don’t drink flavored teas. But this and Twinings’ loose-leaf earl grey are I supposed my guilty pleasures. I don’t even like cinnamon, but I love this.
I only make it with milk, however (and then make a liter and drink all of it and feel gross), so I can sort of pretend it’s just really tasty milk and not flavored tea. I purchased this after having Blackflower and Co’s Signature Chai, which seems like it’s more or less the same sort of thing. Both with that rich-in-oil sheen on the leaves, and those little bits of orange. I’d also heard of it all over, but never realized that it was from right here in Seattle (I live nearby).
If you almost-but-don’t-quite like this tea with water, I strongly recommend making it with milk. 1tbsp/8oz of milk. Mmmm.
You will, however, want to daub off the little sheet of warm-milk-stuff/oils. It comes off in one piece, though, and is also sort of neat and weird.
It just tastes all warm and snuggly.

It’s not vile but it’s unsettling. I had a few sips and it made me sick to my stomach.

A gift from my tea loving friend, this is the tea that started it all. It brought back memories of an orange pekoe tea my mom used to buy for me when I was younger. It was so strong when I opened it, I was unsure I would like such a thing. Brewing my first cup of this, I was amazed that it actually tasted like it smelled. It is reminiscent of Christmas in a cup.

Backlogging I got some of this tea from TeaEqualsBliss thank you very much. This tea tastes like cinnamon and abit of clove and a touch of orange and you can taste the medium strength black tea which is pleasant. I think this tea is good. Just a tad strong for me though.

This is one of my favorites. I keep this in my freezer – the tea bags strongly smell like cinnamon and and have an oil to them. This tea I drink hot and add a shot of zwack liquor to it for a bedtime toddy. It does stand out in my tea collection due to the cinnamon smell and taste.

Again more of that lovely cinnamon, with an interesting orange note. A nice tea to snuggle up with on a cold day.

I drank the decaf loose leaf version, as well as the iced tea version, and I thought this was a truly excellent tea: Very strongly flavored (which I like), excellent cinnamon flavor, and hints of citrusy orange. The cinnamon made the tea both sharp and sweet, and the orange added a bit of sweetness also, such that milk and sugar weren’t necessary – although one could add either milk, sugar, or both, and the tea would hold up well (although I did notice that when adding milk, the orange aroma all but disappeared.)

I love going to Pike Place Market and picking up more Market Spice tea. It’s heavily cinnamon, which I love, and not too heavy on the orange part. I have found you need to keep this in a tin or airtight bag, however, as the oils will end up soaking through paper or a ziploc baggie. But at least the whole drawer ends up smelling yummy!

Am I drinking Good Earth Sweet & Spicy tea, right? That’s what Market Spice taste EXACTLY like. It’s more oily, but it’s Good Earth’s unknown sister I think. Still very good, but for the price, I’ll stick with Good Earth.