Tropical Chai #119

While traveling through Europe I decided that my souvenirs would be to bring back tea from each country. I visited Germany, Austria and Switzerland. It was so much fun seeking out the small shops in each town and then trying to converse with them! I remember just enough german to say hello and such, but definitely not asking about tea. I tried to purchase teas local to the area so most are blends. For instance in Austria I purchased Mozarts blend.

I’ll start off by saying that I’m not a huge Rooibos fan. When picking out teas there, I mostly went by scent and what smelled good. We had limited time as we were on a tour so I couldn’t translate all the ingredients.

This tea is obviously rooibos, but I was new to tea then and didn’t really know much about it. This tea has a wonderful aroma, spicy and inticing. I’ve made this hot in the past and it has a nice spicy bite to the tongue. The clove really shines through on this blend – fortunately I’m a clove lover. The rooibos on this is high quality and doesn’t taste earthy at all!

I need to make space in the cupboard and use up some teas so I decided to try it iced. WOW! I think I like it even better this way. I think I have enough to make another 64oz pitcher of this and then it’ll be gone….or maybe a cup or two for the swaps.

I don’t see that you can order this on their website but if you’re there – pick some up!

Backlogging… again. I made this tisane Sunday night, per request from the hubby. The smell from the bag is a little hard to figure out. It’s DEFINITELY a rooibos, but beyond that, I can only smell little hints of flavoring here and there. There doesn’t seem to be a very even stuff-to-rooibos ratio; just a few pink peppercorns, cinnamon bits, and cardamom pods peeking out at you here and there.

I had to make this one to go, because I had a class to go teach that evening. After sipping it a couple of times in the car, I pondered that I couldn’t really detect anything ‘tropical’ in this tisane. I wanted to… but it wasn’t strong enough. I can see in the ingredient list that it’s got some orange flavoring, but I didn’t get it at all. The flavor of the rooibos—which was good quality rooibos, don’t get me wrong—just took over everything, even the peppercorns. I did get a hint of cardamom, but not enough for me to call this a chai flavored tisane. The name sounds fascinating, but the flavors just aren’t there, and I’m afraid I don’t like just straight rooibos flavor enough to give this one a very high rating.