My first impression of this tea's flavor was shockingly wretched: an overwhelming impression of stale coffee and mud, with some orangey/cinnamon hint buried beneath. I asked, "How can this tea possibly be so nasty with such a delicious-looking ingredients list?" It contains: rooibos, cinnamon, ginger root, orange peel, hibiscus, cloves, "natural flavors", star anise, and black pepper. That should be a winning spiced-herbal lineup! This was in a hotel's breakfast area, where I later guessed that the hot-water dispenser pot may have been used previously for coffee and not thoroughly cleaned.

So I took a couple of bags home and tried them in my good well water. I was right about the hotel's hot-water jug; the stale-coffee flavor was gone and I could taste the orange and spices better. Who knows what kind of Superfund-grade sludge had accumulated in that dispenser from its obvious neglect? [Lesson, fellow tea chuggers: Don't judge a tea without knowing the water quality!]

Unfortunately the muddy, flat part of the original taste remained. It brewed up dark quickly (as with the Farmer Brothers black tea I tried several months ago), and interestingly, much closer to the color of black tea than rooibos. The dry-bag and in-cup aromas were weak to middling; I expected better from this roster of ingredients. Only the wet-bag aroma came close to how I imagine it should. Are poor-quality ingredients used, or did the boxes sit around in some dusty, hot warehouse for far too long? I don't know. Either way, overall, this product was a disappointment, even for food-service tea.

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