The Good: Caffeinated, Tastes good with sugar
The Bad: Bitter aftertaste, Average tea flavor
The Basics: A fairly average, though nutty flavored tea, Nutcracker Sweet is hampered by a dry, bitter aftertaste when there is no sugar in it.
Every now and then, I come across a box of tea on the discount racks that I cannot resist trying. Usually, this has more to do with price than being wild about the flavor - though with some holiday tea flavors, that does not hold! - but either way, less expensive tea is good tea, at least as far as I am concerned. It was precisely because the price was significantly discounted that I picked up "Nutcracker Sweet," one of the many holiday teas available from Celestial Seasonings.
This adjective tea - a tea whose name does not actually describe the flavor of the tea - is a black tea that one assumed is supposed to be nutty and sweet and it gets it half right. However, the bitter aftertaste of this blend often prevents it from reaching its full taste potential as a "sweet" or dessert tea. The result is a pretty average tea for most consumers.
Basics
Nutcracker Sweet is a Holiday Tea from Celestial Seasonings. Nutcracker Sweet is a black tea, so it uses pretty standard tea leaves and has a flavor most consumers will recognize as tea. Celestial Seasonings releases this delightful flavor every year in winter, though it appears to be available year round in Boulder and on-line (HINT: Check out your supermarket's "clearance" aisle right after the holidays!). As a caffeinated tea, this is not ideal for some consumers late at night, but it does make for a good morning tea. In winter is will wake one right up!
Nutcracker Sweet comes in Celestial Seasoning's standard stringless tea bags, which are paired together with easy to separate perforations that allow one to separate the tea bags. When I make pots of tea, I tend to use two bags and leave them connected. A box of Nutcracker Sweet comes with ten pairs (20 individual) of tea bags.
Ease Of Preparation
As a black tea, Nutcracker Sweet is about as easy as boiling a pot of water. A single tea bag will make the standard 8 oz. coffee mug worth of tea and could be reused and make a second cup of Nutcracker Sweet with little loss of flavor. Indeed, this is one of the best teas for those who like to reuse tea bags. The second cup often comes out almost as strong as the first, provided the first steeping was not over the recommended time. I tend to make my tea using a 32 oz. steeping tea pot and that works well, though in this method, the second brewing is - at best - about 3/4 strength.
To prepare Nutcracker Sweet tea, bring a pot of water to a boil and pour it over the tea bags. This tea takes only three to five minutes to steep according to the directions. In my experience, it gets mildly stronger after five minutes but there is no significant benefit to letting it steep longer than seven minutes (in fact, this ends any chance of being able to reuse the bag for our miserly readers).
Taste
Nutcracker Sweet is an adjective tea, which means that there are no strict flavor specifications for it to live up to. This tea smells strongly of vanilla, which makes some sense when one considers the ingredients. In fact, the scent is of little more than vanilla when one smells a boiling cup or pot of this tea.
That said, consumers are likely to be in for a bit of a shock when they try the tea. Nutcracker Sweet is a very nutty flavor tea that tastes mostly like black tea and hazelnuts. The nutty, buttery taste is sublimated to the very dry, bitter aftertaste that takes over quite quickly when one has it in its unadulterated form. In fact, without anything added to it, "Nutcracker Sweet" is downright unpleasant.
A single teaspoon of sugar changes all that, though. One teaspoon of sugar cuts the aftertaste so it is merely dry, not bitter. Similarly, sugar brings out a faint hint of cinnamon to the flavor that is positively delightful. The tea never truly gets sweet, though. With a splash of milk, the dry aftertaste is cut as well, but the flavor of simple black tea becomes the dominant flavoring.
Nutrition
The ingredients to this tea, are fairly simple: black tea, natural vanilla extract with other natural flavors and cinnamon. This makes it a very healthy tea for those who worry about how their foods are processed. Nutcracker Sweet is gluten free and has no artificial colorings, flavorings or preservatives.
In terms of nutrition, this tea is devoid of it. One 8 oz. mug of this tea provides nothing of nutritional value to the drinker. There are no calories (save what one adds from sugar, which I recommend), no fat, sodium, or protein. This tea does, however, have caffeine. This has a caffeine rating of 45, which is equivalent to a cola, but about half of what drip coffee has. This is not a tea where the tea will wake the drinker up, but it can help one stay awake.
Storage/Clean-up
Nutcracker Sweet tea is very easy to clean up after - the tea bags may be disposed in the garbage, or composted if you have a good garden and/or compost pile. The tea itself might stain a mug a faint brown if it is left there for days on end, but otherwise may be cleaned up easily by rinsing out the vessel.
Overall
Nutcracker Sweet is a tea that tastes good, but not great and as a result, it is average at best. In other words, it is pleasant once or twice a year around the holidays or after when it is severely discounted.
For other Celestial Seasonings teas, please check out my reviews of:
Golden Honey Darjeeling
Chocolate Caramel Enchantment
Linden Mint
5/10
For other tea reviews, along with listings of other food and beverage reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!
© 2010, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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