Organic Orange Spice Black Tea

My children told my mother to gift me some teas for my birthday. She gave me a pretty new tea pot and creamer with a gift box of 9 types of tea from this company. My guess is she picked them up together at on of the TJMaxx shops.

Grabbed my mug this morning and put the kettle on to boil. The tea bags appear to have finely ground powder in them. I steeped for about 5 minutes while putting together my breakfast, perhaps I could have let it sit a bit longer to increase the flavors. However, this is definitely the type of tea my mom would drink. Its a straightforward black tea with a hint of orange and clove. Nothing fancy and not too strong but absolutely ok.

This is the third of eight teas gifted to me in a beautiful tin which looked like a deep narrow tome. Since the person who gave me these teas is very dear to me, I am sorry that the teas I’ve tried so far have been wanting in more flavor. Each bag holds only .05 g of tea, which is a small teabag’s worth. I used 4 bags in about 25 oz of just-under-boiling water, and let them steep for 7 minutes.
The box these all came in doesn’t describe what variety of tea(s?) may be contained. It only says ‘black tea’ and ‘natural flavors’. The lack of any kind of actual orange zest or ground spice is all too evident. There’s neither enough tea nor enough flavor—natural or otherwise—to make much good impression.
Overall, even with four teabags in a half-teapot, the taste is weak, thin, watery, not very strong at all. There’s a barely-there spice after-note. I added some sugar to see if that would draw out any more flavor; sadly, the answer is no.
Because this was a gift from someone I love, I won’t give a formal lack of recommendation. Just read my review here, and use this tea to mellow out a too-strong pot of another tea, say—rather than drink it by itself. Or if you’re ailing and NEED to drink some weak tea, then this is the one.