Wednesday, December 5, 2012

A New Seasonal Tea Worth Picking Up: Celestial Seasonings Sweet Harvest Pumpkin


The Good: Caffeinated, Great flavor, No aftertaste
The Bad: Only limited availability!
The Basics: Sweet Harvest Pumpkin should be available all year round, it is so good!


Given how seasonal teas usually have limited appeal and end up overstocked at local grocery stores, I cannot recall the last time I actually picked up a Celestial Seasonings seasonal tea before it was on clearance. That tradition was broken when I spotted only a few boxes of the new Sweet Harvest Pumpkin at the grocery store. Having never had it and having never even seen it, I decided I had to try it.

It was SO worth it!

In fact, this is a tea that makes me wish Celestial Seasonings would add it to their permanent line-up!

Basics

Sweet Harvest Pumpkin is a Holiday Tea from Celestial Seasonings. Sweet Harvest Pumpkin is a black tea, so it uses pretty standard tea leaves and has a flavor most consumers will recognize as tea. Celestial Seasonings just released the flavor for this winter . 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 it will wake one right up!

Sweet Harvest Pumpkin 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 three bags and leave them connected. A box of Sweet Harvest Pumpkin comes with ten pairs (20 individual) of tea bags.

Ease Of Preparation

As a black tea, Sweet Harvest Pumpkin 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 Sweet Harvest Pumpkin 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 Sweet Harvest Pumpkin 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 no stronger after five minutes.

Taste

Sweet Harvest Pumpkin is a delightfully sweet tea that has a strong aroma immediately evocative of autumn! With cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg dominating the scent, anyone who loves pumpkin pie will want a sip of the Sweet Harvest Pumpkin tea the moment they smell it.

On the taste front, this tea is a flavor blend of black tea, ginger and pumpkin. The Sweet Harvest Pumpkin requires no sugar because it is sweet. I’m not sure how Celestial Seasonings did it, considering spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and cloves all usually leave a terribly dry aftertaste and black tea is inherently bitter, but the Sweet Harvest Pumpkin tastes like it already has sugar in it, it is that sweet. Amazingly, Sweet Harvest Pumpkin does not taste like a Pumpkin Spice tea; it actually has a slightly creamy, very rooty flavor of actual pumpkin! I’ve not tasted anything quite like it in a tea before and it is quite extraordinary.

With a splash of milk, the Sweet Harvest Pumpkin tea is like drinking a liquefied slice of pumpkin pie . . . without the crust and no dry or bitter aftertaste. This is a thoroughly satisfying, entirely thirst-quenching tea.

Nutrition

The ingredients to this tea, are all-natural and include: black tea, cinnamon, and ginger. This makes it a very healthy tea for those who worry about how their foods are processed. Sweet Harvest Pumpkin is gluten free and has no artificial colorings, flavorings or preservatives. It is also Kosher and has caffeine.

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. This tea does, however, have caffeine, but how much is a bit of a mystery (whatwith Celestial Seasonings having gotten rid of the meter they used to have on their boxes!).

Storage/Clean-up

Sweet Harvest Pumpkin 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. This is a very dark black tea and it will stain light fabrics if it gets on them as well.

Overall

Sweet Harvest Pumpkin tea tastes so good, that it should be a permanent addition to the Celestial Seasonings line-up. Whether or not it is, this year one has the opportunity to make some great culinary memories using it!

For other Celestial Seasonings tea reviews, please visit my reviews of:
Tummy Mint
Sleepytime Sinus Soother
Mandarin Orange Spice

8.5/10

For other tea reviews, along with listings of other food and beverage reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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