Hot Cinnamon Spice

A fellow tea love hot me hooked on this tea, and nearly three years later, it’s still a staple in my tea cabinet! It is like a liquid hug in a mug! This one warms you up and is so rich and decadent. The cinnamon in it is just perfect, without being overpowering. I don’t add anything to this tea when I drink it because it’s perfect on its own! I also love the cinnamon in it for the added health benefits as well. I especially enjoy this tea after meals.

Sample cube 12/18

This one definitely smells like an autumn drink—loaded with cinnamon and spice, and a whiff of orange. There were plenty of orange peel pieces in the sachet as well. The flavor of this tea is in-your-face cinnamon. There’s definitely a spicy kick, and most of all a surprising, intense sweetness that was like cinnamon candies had been dissolved in it. The presence of the black tea itself is fairly weak, probably deliberately chosen to not overwhelm the other flavors, and the brew is a lighter color than the typical black tea. Overall, this is a tea that makes it feel like it’s October or November already. It might not be everyone’s cup of tea (haha) due to the spice and sweetness. I’m glad I saved this one for a cloudy morning…

A few things to mention here. I put off trying this tea for so long, despite knowing it was one of their most popular teas. Although, I had grown up loving everything and anything that had to do with the word “cinnamon” I’ve drifted away from it in recent years. I’ve come to find the artificial cinnamon flavor to be nauseating. However, this tea was available at a work event I attended about a year and a half ago, and I figured I may as well give it a try, since none of the other flavors available tickled my fancy.

WHAT HAD I BEEN MISSING!? It was in tea bag-form and was the most delicious thing I had ever tasted. In the coming months I found myself drinking multiple cups of it a day. I had feared I would reach a point where I would become sick of it, and ruin it for myself for forever, but although I came close, I still have not reached that point.

Many things have changed since that day; I have a new job, that’s a mere 10-minute walk from the Harney & Sons Soho Store, I moved around the corner from David’s Tea on Bleecker Street, so I am constantly surrounded by amazing quality teas (isn’t that the dream??) However, I’ve also been negligent in my activity on Steepster, and for that I apologize. Fear not, I have been enjoying my fair share of fabulous teas, and have plenty of reporting back to do. Starting here, I still save this for my late afternoon tea. I have a cup of it at about 4pm at work, and look forward to this break every day to reflect and get me through the remainder of my day!

I’m really into cinnamon flavored teas lately so I’ve been buying a bunch of different ones from various brands. I heard good things about this one so I was excited to try it.

I’m just wondering…how do people stand the sweetness of it?! Seriously o.o It’s so sweet that it tastes artificial and no tea should be that naturally sweet. I would like to decide how sweet I want my teas to be by adding honey or sugar myself, thank you very much.

Well. A lot of people seem to be enjoying it so maybe it’s just me :P

Thanks to the lovely Ost I got to try my very first Harney & Sons tea…as well as join all the Steepsters in giving such a great man a well earned tribute! :]

Wow, I can see why H&S has such a following. I’ve been looking at their site for ages and just haven’t gotten myself to purchase from all their yummy-looking teas.. but this has definitely put me over the edge! .

The best word that I can come up with to describe this tea is “zippy.”! haha…like the little red hots candies. mmm, talk about a flavor explosion! I love this cup of tea right now, but I could see it being extra perfect during the fall and winter! Something about this tea evokes images of autumn leaves and bunnies hopping through the snow. Just lovely.

This one was a little too strong for me (and apparently my nose) last time I made it, so I decided this time I would cut open a silken sachet and measure out a teaspoon. There’s not too much more than a teaspoon in there, probably about one-and-a-half total. Steeped it for 5 minutes as per usual.

I’m finding it even more pleasant this way. I could see it being a tiny bit stronger, I might try a slightly heaping teaspoon in the future. And it’s not making me sneeze!

So now, the fun begins. Cutting open all of those sachets and putting the loose tea back in the tin. XD

My dad is one of those people for whom all tea tastes the same. On occasion he can tell that he doesn’t like something (for example, he really didn’t like camellia flower tea). Somehow that didn’t stop him from wanting a piece of my haul from the Coffee & Tea Festival. So I gave him most of my H&S samples of this tea (oddly enough, they were giving out the same samples last year). I also happened to have an extra tin of this lying around, so I added that to the pile along with the Tarlton Green that I picked up special for him. Three days later, my dad comes back to me saying how much he loved one of the tea samples I gave him and can I get him more. Of course he had forgotten the name but when he described it I realized it had to be this one, so I got to be all “I already gave you a whole tin and you didn’t realize it. So there, I’m that good! Bwahahaha!” Ok, maybe I didn’t actually say bwahahaha, but I was totally thinking it.

When even my dad finds a tea distinctive, I had to give it a try. The cinnamon is definitely dominant here. It tastes like cinnamon sticks, not powder. It’s also weirdly juicy. I know there isn’t any blackcurrant in here but I could swear I’m picking up a tinge of it. There’s a sweetness here that’s very much present but not overpowering. After a few sips, I realized what this tastes like – it’s dead on for red hots!

This is vaguely in the same flavor family as Della Terra’s Cinnamon Diletto, which I hated. That one tasted like Big Red gum. My problem with it was that the sweetness was off somehow, almost aspartame-like. I can’t stand the taste of aspartame. Here, though, the sweetness is more sugary and meshes very well with the cinnamon. I can’t make out the black tea base, but it’s possible that the base is also holding the flavors together better than the rooibos base in the Cinnamon Diletto.

Overall, this tea is more liquid candy than tea. I can see why a non-tea drinker (non-tea-drinker?) would like it. I find it tasty enough, but I do prefer being able to taste something of the base. It’s also a bit too sweet. I love the lingering strength of the cinnamon though.

Like many black teas, this one hurt my stomach. I’m giving my last few sample sachets to my dad and calling this a sipdown.

Always a favorite. Even though it’s 80s here in Arizona today I am watching Doctor WHo christmas specials and drinking a cup of this (perhaps more….)

This tea always reminds me of the little cinnamon heart candies. The tea warms your whole belly. Whenever I have a cup of it people always comment on how much it smells like christmas.

love this tea :)

As the other reviewers have said, this one is really just Red Hots in a cup. There’s no subtlety here, no base tea lingering at the end or complex flavour notes…it’s simply a profoundly cinnamon tea, and a well done one at that.

With that said, I would’ve preferred a little more complexity, so for me this is a good tea…but not one I would choose to drink again.

I love this tea so much— it’s the tea that introduced me to the Harney and Sons brand. You have to really love cinnamon (I do!) to enjoy this tea… the flavor is both hot and sweet, almost like cinnamon Red Hot candies are melted into a good black tea. It’s especially good in the fall and winter.