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2020 Advent Swap – Day 1

This is one of my favorites that I buy regularly!

I’m so excited the advent season is finally here. I love reading everyone’s tasting notes from all the different advent calendars out there, and I’ve been looking forward to this month’s advent swap. My swap partner this year is Devon Bartholomew – thanks to Devon for sending such a cute and festive calendar! I’m planning to post Devon’s comments for each day’s tea at the top of each of my tasting notes, mostly so that I can remember when looking back on these later. Devon – please let me know if you’d rather I leave these out.

My tea of the day is this Bigelow cinnamon black tea, which is a good start to December. One of my favorite cinnamon teas is a bagged tea I found at Walmart a few years back from Carrington Tea called Cinnamon Apple. The ingredients were simple – black tea, natural apple flavors, and cinnamon. I believe it’s no longer available, so I’m on the lookout for a replacement (bagged or loose leaf will do) to fill the void it’s left behind. It was such a perfect cozy tea. Opening today’s advent tea gave me some hope that this might be a similar blend.

My least favorite cinnamon flavor is the Red Hots candy variety. I’m pretty sure I’ve read that this is one of the specific types of cinnamon, and a quick Google search mentions cassia rather than Ceylon contributing to this spicy flavor. I’ll admit that I was a little worried this would have that spicy candy cinnamon flavor based on the aroma alone. Though once it steeped for a bit, the cinnamon became milder and the tea quite pleasant. True, there was still a bit of that lingering spicy heat, but funnily enough, it was more akin to Big Red chewing gum than Red Hots. Not sure there’s even a difference between the two flavors, but my mind is telling me that Big Red is much better than Red Hots.

Overall, this was an enjoyable tea though it doesn’t compete for top cinnamon black when compared to my beloved Apple Cinnamon. It could be that the apple plays a larger role than I’m giving it credit for, so perhaps this isn’t a fair comparison. For straight cinnamon + black tea, this was uncomplicated and satisfying. I would drink more of this, though I probably wouldn’t buy a box of it as I’m still holding out hope for that perfect cinnamon black. I did recently buy some of teakruthi’s Cinnamon Chai, which is only black tea and Ceylon cinnamon, so we’ll see how that compares. I do also think I would like to find an apple cinnamon blend to keep on hand as well. Does anyone have any favorite apple cinnamon black tea blends they would recommend?

Thanks so much, Devon, for sharing one of your favorites with me!