One of the last, if not the last, as yet untasted Todd & Holland black tea samples. I think I found them all. At one point I had all my sample packets lined up in rows in shoebox sized plastic containers, but I liberated those to store my unrefrigerated Nutrisystem food. When I did that, the packets mixed in with the rest of my tea stash in an unhelpfully disorganized way. I thought I’d found them all, then found this. It’s possible there’s a straggler out there somewhere.
In the packet, the tea smells mostly of cinnamon with a little orange around the edges. The cinnamon is strong — almost eyewateringly so — and reminds me of red hots, or cinnamon toothpicks.
Cinnamon, clove, orange… it’s the Constant Comment flavor profile in the ingredients, essentially. As I’ve mentioned before, I have a soft spot for Constant Comment. The difference here is the flavor balance. I can’t really smell or taste the clove, and I can smell the orange but I can’t really taste it.
It makes a rust-colored, clear liquor that smells strongly of cinnamon. With the heat of the water, it’s less like red hots and more like a cinnamon roll.
The flavor is surprisingly sweet, sweeter than I would have anticipated from the aroma.
This is basically the Todd & Holland version of Harney’s Hot Cinnamon Spice. I haven’t had that in a while, but reading my description of it in an old tasting note, that’s pretty much the same flavor I’m tasting here. Sweet-hot cinnamon.
Harney’s gets points for being direct about it in the name, but this is a good cinnamon tea. It’s a little less hefty than I remembered the Harney being, which can be good or bad depending on one’s mood at the moment.
Flavors: Cinnamon, Orange, Sweet
