It's been a long time since I've reviewed a bagged tea, but I recently ordered the Republic of Tea Catalog for a reason that may or may not have been for free samples, and wanted to try this one. I'm a sucker for holiday teas since they're usually fruity and spicy and get you into that holiday mood.
Outsides: I got a biodegradable envelope with a round, unbleached sachet of tea inside. TL;DR: The most environmentally friendly a sachet tea can be. This tea blend contains black tea, apple pieces, cinnamon, cloves and licorice. The tea smells great unsteeped, like a sweet apple spice cake. I steeped it in boiled water for about 4 minutes. The color is lighter than but still very similar looking to apple cider in both hue and opacity. It still has that sweet spiced apple cake smell to it.Insides: First off, I can barely taste the tea. It's there, but it lacks astringency (good) and balance between all the other flavors (not so good) with a little bit of a weak tea body. The flavor mix does have a very nice balance between fruity and spicy, with the cinnamon, cloves and licorice adding sweetness to the apple flavor that this tea had. If anything, this is a good tea for anyone wanting the flavor of apple cider but without all the sugar. And despite my not-nice things that I said about the tea portion, I think that it was at one point, a decent quality tea for a bagged tea, just overshadowed by the flavor.
Overall: If you have someone on your holiday list that likes bagged tea and cider, this might be the gift to give.
My Rating: Try it!
The Republic of Tea often advertises on my blog, meaning they have tons of money but also some higher quality tea bags as opposed to most of the other tea bag companies I review. I got this sample from a catalog which I will look through and they seem to have a cool "Design your own gift" thing which looks like a good idea.
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