In the summer of 2014, one of the Meetup groups I belong to was having a lunch at Crossroads Tea Room in Old Town Spring. In my ten years of living in the Houston area, Old Town Spring was one place I had been meaning to visit but hadn't had the opportunity yet. Friends? Lunch? A tea room? It was the perfect excuse!
Lunch with the other ladies was delightful! One of the teas we enjoyed was the Old Town Spice, a black tea flavored with sweet cinnamon oil! I loved this tea so much that I bought a bag of it for myself and a bag of their decaf for my mother-in-law!
(The rest of Old Town Spring was great, by the way! Lots of quaint little shops, including a German store and a Dutch Store (Little Dutch Girl), where I was able to purchase several food items that I had enjoyed as a child when I lived in Holland.)
This past Sunday, I made a pot of the Old Town Spice tea to share with my husband. He also enjoys this one a lot, because it reminds him of those cinnamon red hot candies.
The dry tea leaf pieces are very small and tightly rolled, like a Middle Eastern or Indian-style black tea. The dry aroma is overwhelmingly red-hot cinnamon.
I used 1 tablespoon of tea to 3 cups of boiling water and steeped the tea for 4 1/2 minutes.
The result was a stunning rich cinnamon-red-brown liquor with the ever-present cinnamon scent.
This is a nice strong black tea with a delightful tongue-tingling cinnamon flavor! There is sweetness in the cinnamon flavoring, so you do not even need to add sugar. (Diabetics be warned!)
This is definitely one of my favorite teas ever.
If the description of this tea sounds uncannily like the Cinnamon Spice Tea from Harney and Sons, you're not the only one who sees the resemblance! I'm not sure who came up with this concept first, Harney's or Crossroads Tea. But either way, I'm glad this style of tea exists under multiple brand names!
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