Tea Chai Te

Brews up a nice dark amber. Smells strongly of vanilla in the bag, and brews into a nice calm vanilla blanketing a lovely black tea. Simple but very nice.

thanks TeaEqualsBliss for sending this in a trade a while back. On the site searching for steeping notes, I noticed it mentioned that this was a 1st Place Winner in Oregon’s First State Tea Competition – Sept. 2, 2011. Nice! This seemed to me more of a chai than anything medicinal! The tea looks better than in this picture. There are many colors in the blend! The steep color is a bright orange. The taste is a pretty solid chai… the type not mixed with black tea which is nice sometimes. I like the addition of the licorice… it adds something special! (Even though the tea I had yesterday also had licorice.) Nice and spicy!

This is my second time having this. And it was just as excellent the second time around as the first. Granted, they probably over-steeped it a little bit, but that’s the great thing about a damn good black – it takes a punishment with poise.

This was my tea of choice for a clandestine meet-up with a fellow tea blogger – An International Tea Moment. You can read about that here: http://lazyliteratus.teatra.de/2012/10/10/meeting-a-tea-moment/

Er…if you wish.

Oh how I LOVE this…I can’t believe I am parting with the lil bit I have left…

This is one of the samples from my box from LiberTEAS, and also one of the only teas I specifically requested. Rose and chai are two of my favorite things, so it was a winner before I even tried it! She was nice enough to send me the last she had of this blend, enough for 3 or even 4 cups (not counting re-steeps). That sample box was probably the best tea-related things I’ve ever purchased—it’s been about a month since I got it and I’ve been trying to taste one of the samples every 2 days or so, but so far I have only actually run out of ONE kind! Okay, sorry this is sounding like a paid advertizement, I just get a little giddy whenever I look at how much stuff from it I have left to taste/finish~

Anyway, the tea. I love floral teas, creamy teas, and chai: all of those elements are very prevalent here. It’s floral, but not overpoweringly so, and I’ve always found rose to be the “sweetest” floral scent so it adds a nice balance to the spices. The chai part is warming, not too spicy but it has a great mouth-feel. There’s not a ton of ginger and I don’t think any pepper, which is what usually gives you that “heat”. This blend has more aromatic spices—cardamom, cinnamon, clove, maybe a little allspice? They work SO well with the rose. Then there’s that creaminess from the vanilla, perfectly balancing the spice/floral so nothing is overpowering and everything is in harmony. This is one of the best chais I’ve tasted and is most definitely going on my shopping list!

I needed a caffeine fix this morning and this one did the job for me. Delicious. I love the macadamia nut flavor here, it melds so nicely with the vanilla. So good.

Oh yum! YUM!!! This is the third tea that I picked up at Tea Chai Te, and I think this is a newer blend because it isn’t even on their website.

It is amazingly good – the spices are warm (not spicy hot). I taste the cardamom and the cinnamon primarily, and the vanilla is quite strong too. It is smooth and creamy, giving this cup a very luxurious kind of taste. The touch of rose is a delicate note, but it does much to add to the luxurious taste. Exotic, sweet, and absolutely irresistible – it is difficult to put the cup down long enough to type!

YUM! This is one of the three different teas/tisanes that I purchased when I visited Tea Chai Té a couple of weeks ago. I don’t usually order yerba maté, so I thought I’d step outside of my comfort zone a little and try something I wouldn’t normally purchase, and when I saw Vanilla Macadamia Nut … well, that’s all I needed, really!

There are really too few macadamia nut flavored teas/tisanes out there. Tasting this makes me wonder why. This is really incredible. The vanilla tones are smooth and creamy and sweet, and the taste of the macadamia nut sort of sneaks up on you, starting as a rather subtle flavor and developing with each sip. By mid-cup, it’s delicious macadamia nuttiness!

On Tuesday afternoon, my husband took me out to lunch in the Sellwood neighborhood in Portland, and right around the corner was Tea Chai Te, and after lunch he was good enough to bring me there to grab a cup of iced tea (and some loose leaf to go). This is the tea I ordered iced, but I also got an ounce of it to bring with me, and I brewed some of that tonight. I have to admit that I prefer the tea that I brewed myself over the tea that they served to me, I suspect that they didn’t make the tea strong enough when they added ice to it, making for a weak iced tea. This is MUCH better … lots of delicious, juicy strawberry flavor and sweet, buttery Sencha.

So yummy!

Mmmm. The vanilla taste comes through pretty strong, but doesn’t overpower the black tea. It’s super vanilla-y but not too creamy. I think I would enjoy drinking this in the winter because something about the aftertaste makes me think of a gentle snowfall.

I absolutely love this tea. The ceylon is pronounced and the vanilla really comes through. It needs nothing, no milk or sugar. A beautiful blend!

Delicious! It’s been a while since I’ve had this Oolong. It is a milk Oolong, and I just learned that in last year’s Oregon Tea competition it won 1st place. Cool.

A lovely milky/fresh cream taste with just a hint of buttermilk to it. The floral tones in the background are very lovely, and they emerge more with subsequent infusions (I’m on my third and fourth infusion now).

I like this one a lot.

This is good, but it’s more like a spiced hot chocolate than a chai. Very chocolate-y and not overly spicy, I’d recommend this for when you’re in the mood for a hot chocolate, rather than tea. This looks like hot chocolate powder with whole spices – I did not see any tea leaves at all in the bit that I used.

Backlog: I finished off the last that I had of this delicious coconut tea. So smooth and delicious.

Enjoying a cup of this as I cook dinner. So good… even better than I remember, so I am going to increase the rating a bit.

I’m off to begin my review!

I saved this tisane for a time like this – trying to avoid getting sick like the rest of my house seems to be! This is a very soothing blend. Much tastier than I thought it would be. The cardamom and cloves come through very nicely, the rooibos are not a strong component but do lend a little bit of woody/nutty taste to the cup. The licorice is also quite strong. This tastes a bit more like a spice melangé than a medicinal/functional tea to me, and that’s a good thing! It does have a medicinal quality to it that sort of sits in the background, but it isn’t an unpleasant taste. Not a bad way to take my medicine!

Their menu said it was actually a 5-year-aged pu-erh, but no matter. I had a li’l tea date this evening, and decided to give this a go. I’ve had sheng tuo cha elsewhere and ended up liking it quite a bit. This one wasn’t quite as excellent as the others I’ve tried – lacking some of the wine-y/grape-y note – but it more than made up for that with an earthy/floral presence. I would gladly select it again.

Had a cuppa earlier it was good…see previous notes…

A couple of friends and I had just finished a happy hour run, but we still had time to kill. A tea place lay across the street. So, naturally, that was my suggestion. They went for the bubble tea (blegh), whereas I went with this. If I were to never drink another type of black tea again except one, this would be that one. And others like it. Dunno what it is about Yunnan Golds, but they take the creamy cake. My only regret is that I didn’t have the forethought to pick up an ounce to bring home.

Thanks LiberTEAs for this one.

This not only smells but tasted a little like buttermilk. I’m not really sure how I feel about that to be honest. This one somewhat surprised me…not a good surprise or a bad surprise…just a surprise. I wasn’t expecting buttermilk. As it cools there is more of a vegetal and floral taste to it. The aftertaste is of powerful flowers.

My rating may change but for now this is one of the most ‘odd’ tasting oolongs I have had…thus far. Don’t take ‘odd’ as a bad thing…it’s just different…

I found found that I really LOVE not only Pouchongs but Coconut Pouchongs! They just seemed to be made for each other!

This smells like coconut and popcorn. NOM NOM.

It’s incredibly smooth and the pouchong is a great quality pouchong! It makes my mouth water as I sip it. It’s crisp and clean and velvety smooth. LOVE THIS!

Yerba Mate…most of which I find very average in every way taste-wise…this one is exceptional! This is nicely done!!! I really think it’s because the spices are NOT overdone and the orange is a bit more noticeable than the spices and I think it’s great! Yeah. This is a goodie! Thanks LiberTEAs!!!!!

Got this one from LiberTEAs! YAY! It’s like Christmas all over again! Thanks so much!

I can primarily taste the chai-like flavors…mostly cardamom and then the licorice is fairly strong, too! The Rooibos flavors take a back seat.

I’m enjoying this one more than I thought I would. This is decent.

Finishing off the last that I have of this chai blend – it will be missed! I am going to have to make it a point to visit the Tea Chai Té tea shop someday soon!

I divided the brewed tea into two cups, and the first I simply sweetened with a little honey, and the second, I added a little bit of warmed milk. I like this both ways. Without the milk, the star anise becomes a little muted, but with the milk, it becomes really decadent!

Yummy chai!