The Good: Amazing taste and scent! Easy to prepare, Good ingredients
The Bad: Caffeine free!
The Basics: An impressive seasonal tea, Celestial Seasonings’ Sugar Plum Spice is flavorful and delicious on its own!
In my extensive reviews of Celestial Seasonings teas, I was surprised when I discovered there were some classic flavors I had never gotten around to reviewing. After all, most of the seasonally-available teas are still available at the Celestial Seasonings plant in Boulder, Colorado. So, that I had somehow missed the Sugar Plum Spice tea in my yearly sojourns out West, left me surprised. I rectify that oversight now.
Fortunately, Sugar Plum Spice is well worth the effort I went through to find it this holiday season! This is a delightful dessert tea that makes one wish it was available year round!
Basics
Sugar Plum Spice is a Holiday Tea from Celestial Seasonings. Sugar Plum Spice is an herbal tea, so it is a tea in name only (it does not contain any actual tea leaves). 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 an herbal tea, it contains no ingredients in it that are actually caffeinated. Naturally caffeine free, the Sugar Plum Spice tea is enough to awaken consumers by its taste alone, as opposed to through caffeine!
Sugar Plum Spice 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 Sugar Plum Spice comes with ten pairs (20 individual) of tea bags.
Ease Of Preparation
As an herbal tea, Sugar Plum Spice 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 Sugar Plum Spice 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 Sugar Plum Spice tea, bring a pot of water to a boil and pour it over the tea bags. This tea takes only four to six 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 six minutes (in fact, this ends any chance of being able to reuse the bag for our miserly readers).
Taste
Sugar Plum Spice has an appropriately spicy aroma that is inviting to anyone who likes hot, flavorful beverages. The dominant scents are cinnamon and clove, with almost nothing fruity to the scent that precedes the actual drink.
Sugar Plum Spice is surprisingly fruity on the tongue. Containing little of the dry spiciness that the scent presages. Fruity and sweet, the Sugar Plum Spice has a true, plum flavor to it. As a result, it finishes slightly sour.
The tea is sweet enough on its own to not require any sugar! Also, as a pleasant surprise, the Sugar Plum Spice does not have an aftertaste to it. This is a very satisfying beverage.
Nutrition
The ingredients to this tea, are fairly simple, dominated by hibiscus, roasted chicory, and chamomile. This makes it a very healthy tea for those who worry about how their foods are processed. Sugar Plum Spice 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 do not recommend), no fat, sodium, or protein.
Storage/Clean-up
Sugar Plum Spice 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 purple if it is left there for days on end, but otherwise may be cleaned up easily by rinsing out the vessel.
Overall
Sugar Plum Spice is a great tasting fruit and spice tea that is well worth stocking up on so one might enjoy it all year!
For other Celestial Seasonings tea reviews, please visit my reviews of:
Sweet Harvest Pumpkin
Tummy Mint
Sleepytime Sinus Soother
8/10
For other tea reviews, along with listings of other beverage reviews, please visit my Drink Review Index Page for an organized and complete listing!
© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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