Speculoos Tea - Black Tea 100 g - Café du Jour loose tea

A biscuit tin in a black tea

Speculoos is the thin, hard spiced biscuit that comes out of the tin around midwinter, and this blend borrows its spicing wholesale: cinnamon, cardamom, cloves and ginger, laid over a black tea base. Underneath that sit dates, raisins, cocoa beans and cocoa shell, which is what separates it from a plain spiced tea — they give the cup a dark, sweet background the spices alone would not produce.

Black, or with milk

There is enough natural sweetness in the dried fruit and cocoa to drink this one straight, with nothing added, and that is how it is worth trying first. Milk and sugar are still fair game if that is how you take your tea; the black tea base is strong enough to carry them without disappearing.

Three to five minutes, no longer

Allow about 2 g per cup, pour water over it at a full boil and take the strainer out after three to five minutes. That is the one rule worth keeping here: unlike a herbal blend, this has real tea leaf in it, and leaving it standing turns the cup dry and bitter behind the spice. Being loose, you set the spice level yourself by the spoonful.

In the pack

• Type: loose black tea blend, contains caffeine
• Net weight: 100 g
• Ingredients: black tea, ginger, dates, cocoa beans, cinnamon, raisins, cocoa shell, cardamom, cloves, flavouring
• Flavour: wintry and spiced, naturally sweet, cocoa depth
• Brewing: about 2 g per cup, boiling water, 3 to 5 minutes
• Blended and packed in the Netherlands