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Yaaaay, it’s new tea day! It’s new tea day everyone!

So… I got my Ovation Teas order in today, and it has this Vanilla Chai in it. Oh em gee, is it good.

Like most masala chais, the tea in this blend takes a backseat. Both cinnamon and clove are a tough roadmate to contend with, and this blend is no exception (nor do I want it to be!). The vanilla adds just the perfect touch of sweet, creaminess alongside the spices. Man, Ovation did a really good job on this one. The flavor combination is perfect.

This was my first order from OvationTeas. It consisted of this, a maté chai (to compete against Teavana’s Samurai), and a custom blend that smells really, really good (and has figs!).

If nothing else, I have to say that the price is competitive. At $9/4oz, this is going to be a fairly difficult tea to beat. Plus, it really helps that Ovation is about ~10 miles away from my house. I feel like my ridiculously good, moderately priced tea is contributing to my local economy. The shipping was fairly quick, considering that I had a custom blend in there (so excited!).

I’m considering this to be the best tea I will never want to drink again.

Please, allow me to explain.

This tea is very good. It is a very light, mellow, golden black tea. It definitely falls in the more caramel-ly range of black teas, and is very pleasant on the tongue. It’s mellow, it’s smooth, and it’s slightly sweeter than what I normally get from a straight black tea.

But that’s it. The flavor is fleeting, it doesn’t linger, it doesn’t entice me with spicy secrets. It knocks on the door, asks you to vote, and moves on. Two weeks from now, I’m not going to remember it’s name. I’ll stop and go “You know what I want, a good straight black tea… that would taste great” and I’ll pick something that tastes like a black tea, not it’s mellow cousin. He’s a nice guy, but I just don’t think he can get the job done.

Unless you’ve decided you want to try your luck at hand-blending flavored black teas. And you have this flavor that you know would taste great, but you’re afraid it would get overpowered. So you call up black tea’s mellow cousin.

So yeah. It’s good. I just won’t ever find myself going “OH MY GOD I MUST HAVE NONSUCH!”. Except right there, but that doesn’t count.

This definitely rings in as Teavana’s flagship in my book. There isn’t a single other tea or tisane in their repertoire that even compares.

Again, here we are making the distinction of a ‘spice’ tea or a ‘fruit’ tea, as this blend gives you quite a bit of both. The cinnamon is very much the dominant flavor of this blend, which is always something that wins points in my book (why you would keep a pointy book, who knows).

Past the cinnamon, I taste the very wonderful candied pineapple flavor, which then gives way to all the other spice flavors. It is really a very flavorful blend. What’s interesting is that I don’t particularly consider myself a fan of either mate or rooibos. This blend though, man, it’s just the perfect combination of flavors to tie those two base herbs together. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, or some such.

It had been awhile since we had made some, so Missy brewed it up tonight… very pleasant. Although, maybe not the best thought for a nighttime blend… hrmm.

My OvationTeas order will be coming soon… and the Samurai may finally have to defend itself against an upstart challenger. Queue the Rocky music!

If i had to make a distinction, I would say that I like ‘spiced’ teas more than I like ‘fruity’ teas. In other words, if I were to choose between a ginger tea or a peach tea, my assumption would be that I would enjoy the ginger tea more.

Sense does this make, young padawan?

That being said, this tea is both good, and a disappointment. I do not taste ginger in this tea whatsoever, it really to me just tastes like a peach black tea. The peach adds a very pleasant, and slightly tart flavor over the top of the black tea (which tastes like it’s probably a ceylon, but the description doesn’t say for good). It is quite tasty, and it’s a nice flavor combination.

But waaaaaah, where is my beloved Ginger? This island just isn’t the same without her.

Me and my semi-realistic expectations aside, this is another solid offering from TropicalTeaCo, picked up during their March Madness sale. It’s still sitting on their $1/oz list as we speak, and at that price, it’s a steal. Especially if you’re on the other end of the spectrum, and are more of a fruit fan than a spice fan.

(I had to stop myself from writing Spice Girl)

This tea is a bit more remarkable than the last estate tea I tried from TropicalTeaCo.

This tea is very smooth, its a much more mellow bodied tea. I’m not sure I get the true-darjeeling characteristics from it, the fruitiness or the muscatel spiciness… but there is a subtle sweetness behind the the tea flavor. I’m not entirely sure if this is a characteristic of it being a darjeeling, or whether there just happens to be a subtle sweetness ;).

It is definitely a very mellow, relaxing tea. I could see this being a nice evening tea… get home from work… just want a nice simple brew… get your slippers on… pet your vanilla puppy.

This is another TropicalTeaCo ridiculously-cheap-per-ounce buy. In all honesty, I only really bought it for the name (I have a dear friend named Mim, so this made me chuckle a bit). But, it turns out to be quite a tasty tea. I’m not sure what it’s “real” price is, but at $1/oz I can see it being a fairly common purchase. I’ll be getting a darjeeling soon from my groupon Golden Moon sampler. We’ll see how the two compare!

This is definitely a full bodied, malty black tea. It has a nice flavor too it, but nothing terribly special. Another solid, middle of the road black tea from our TropicalTeaCo order.

The one interesting point here… holy hannah is it astringent. Easily one of the most astringent teas I own.

The tea does have a good flavor though, and will lend itself well to some sweet tea over the summer which we’ll have for a week or two, if we’re lucky. I don’t think I’ll buy it again though… it simply isn’t the star of the show, and is far surpassed by other straight black offerings from TropicalTeaCo such as their English Breakfast or their Organic Texas Iced Tea blend.

So, now that my tastebuds are well and truly back in order, Missy wanted me to give this another drink and see how I liked it.

The pear flavor still tastes very artificial and chemical, it has like a soapy taste to it. As the tea cools, this background soapy note also fades away. This could make a very, very tasty iced tea… but I would have a hard time recommending it hot. It’s just very off-putting.

Missy says it tastes great though. I could just be picky!

This is another unique gem from the Tropical Tea Co (TTC) March Madness sale. I’m a little bit behind on my logging… we had another box from them waiting when we got home from shopping earlier. We tried three, all good, and I’m just now getting around to posting a tasting note, with just a teensy tiny bit of tea left in my cup!

This tea is very, very good. Though, the green tea is completely hidden by the vanilla. I absolutely love vanilla. I could have a vanilla house, with a vanilla door, and a little vanilla puppy laying next to my vanilla slippers. And in said vanilla-villa, this tea would fit perfectly.

What’s interestingly lacking in this tea… is the green tea. I don’t necessarily find that bad, I just find it odd. The vanilla flavoring is smooth, it doesn’t taste fake, it doesn’t taste forced, but it is really the only taste that I discern. I’d expect this from a vanilla white tea, not from a green.

At any rate… this is a very smooth, very enjoyable, creamy, luscious vanilla tea, that I am going to very much savor. I only wish we would have tried this with our first box from TTC, so that we would have bought more of it from our second. But seeing as how I’ve received roughly five pounds of tea from them in the past three weeks, it will probably be a little while before i order any more. I haven’t tried others teas with this flavor combination (or flavor obfuscation, more like!), but I’d be happy to continue purchasing this from TTC for… well… ever. Missy wouldn’t let me stop ordering it if I tried.