Cannelle

This came to me courtesy of wheezybee who sent it to me in a swap over the summer. I’ve been enjoying the last few teas she sent me over the past few weeks, I had set them aside for autumn because they were better suited for the weather.

This is my first tea from Mariage Frères, but it certainly won’t be the last. I’m spending the first two weeks of June in France and plan on saving up to go nuts buying tea while I’m there. As soon as Black Friday is over I’m going to buckle down on my spending and it all goes in the Buying Tea in France fund.

Anyway, on to the tea….

This tea smells amazing while it is steeping, my whole house smells like cinnamon now.

About five minutes after I sat down to drink this one of my blog posts made it to the front page of Reddit and my tea got cold while I was trying to manage the social media firestorm. I only managed a few sips while it was hot, but I really loved the creamy texture of the tea and the delicate balance of the cinnamon and black base. This is still pretty good at room temperature, but not exactly how I wanted to drink it.

This is a pretty perfect tea for an autumn afternoon. I like cinnamon in most baked things, so it’s probably not much of a surprise that I like this tea. It’s another relatively straightforward one in terms of flavour — black tea, cinnamon. I’ve added milk, because that’s what seemed right to me, and it works well with that addition. The first sip is just black tea. Slowly, though, the cinnamon starts to develop at the back of the mouth. It’s a warm spiciness, but it’s delicate and almost fragrant. More like a cinnamon stick than ground cinnamon. It’s a taste that lingers well into the next sip, where the flavour builds and strengthens. This could be a nice alternative to 52 Teas Cinnamon Roll Honeybush, now that my supply of that is all gone. I also prefer it to Adagio Cinnamon Spice, which really wasn’t my thing at all. A really good, robust, cinnamon tea. Thanks to Queen of Tarts for the sample!

This was the first morning in a while that I haven’t kicked off with medicinal herbals, and I am excited to get back to trying out different and wonderful teas! I’m starting off with this sweet treat, which was a wonderful surprise in my swap from Moraiwe – thank you!

Today felt like a laid back morning, so I put the kettle on the burner and got out one of my 16oz hand thrown mugs. The online conversion resulted in something like 1/2 teaspoon per 7oz. I prefer to err on the side of richer tea, so I added about 1-1/2tsp of dry tea, 1 tablespoon of beet sugar (I’m trying out the Teavana German Rock Sugar), and steeped for 5 minutes.

My first impression is cinnamon and cream, with the black tea aspect cheerful in the distance. The aftertaste is slightly fruity, but I don’t think my poor, abused senses are up to figuring it out quite yet. It might be an aspect of the beet sugar. I’ll have to use the other half of the sample when I’m back to 100%. Overall, I’m just amazed at how… smooth this tastes. No jarring notes, nothing that seems out of place – it’s gorgeously blended together. It does leave my tongue a little dry, but then that’s fairly standard for cinnamon teas.

I’ve heard about this company before, but this was my first tangible introduction to them. Thank you again, Moraiwe, for this opportunity!

Update: This holds up surprisingly well on the second steep, so I asked my husband (who escaped the cold) for his opinion. He agreed that there was a slightly fruity aftertaste, but said it was just too faint to identify. And he liked the tea, too! ;)