Still from the tea swap (thank you Keen Tea Time) a spiced herbal blend. Cultural expectations and all this tastes not at all christmas-y to me – it´s spearmint, orange rind and american cinnamon mostly. Spearmint has its own tang, different from the usual mint around my parts of the world, to me its association with toothpaste is unavoidable. And american cinnamon is also different from my regular cinnamon, american cinnamon to me is the taste of tooth-friendly chewing gum. So you see where this is going. Instead of Christmas associations, this sounded like a very tooth-friendly drink. And it was a nice, palate cleansing sort of taste, I liked it. Orange was also present, but my mind focused mostly on the spearmint-cinnamon thing. Cloves I did not detect.
The one drawback of this tea for me was that it was so thin, so weak. I like that they did not use fillers like chicory (à la Lipton) which taste muddy to me, but the poor spearmint was just not up to the task of my bigg-ish tea cup. When rebrewing I think I will up the dose or halve the tea
I know what you mean about it being weak. I usually brew two or three bags together! :)
Great minds think alike, because that will be what I will do! or brew much less, which is also an option. I really liked the balance of flavours, it tastes very sharp and clean, sort of pure, to me, but I think it is that toothpaste – virtuous chewing gum association!