Samurai Chai Maté

A favorite tea of mine with sweet flavors and spicy cinnamon. I have not had this recent, but remember it well enough to type a tasting note.

I would generally wake up to this… Smell the tin the leaves were in and steep the amount for a cup. Usually I would steep this for a long time simply because it would not get bitter and would get stronger with the moments passing.

I cannot wait to order more this and hopefully by xmas time it will be with me. Possibly by the pound!

I love this tea! I was a daily coffee drinker always adding specialty creams which loaded my day with lots of sugar and unnecessary calories. So, I tried this tea after reading the comments of others on the Teavana website. To be sure, it helps me to wake up (I have NEVER been a morning person) without feeling all nervous and twitchy. Also, I have a thyroid condition that requires me to take a pill every morning and adding that with coffee made be vibrate like a humming bird…so this tea has been a great problem solver! I am a nurse so shaky hands are a big no no! But, this tea does not give me the shakes and that makes me and my patients very happy") Good product for me to say the least!

This is great for people like me who do not like chai tea. you only get a hint of the chai. smells great tastes good. fruity smooth. caffeine is good.

Super intense and very sharp. Love the citrus notes and the spicy finish. 1 1/2 teaspoon per 8 oz. with a hint of sugar.

As a standalone brew, it has this strange aftertaste that left a sickening sweetness in the back of my throat. I had to add a pinch of something more abrasive like Earl Grey just to make it tolerable. Aside from that, the flavor was alright. Nevertheless, I ended up giving about half of it away and I have no plans to purchase this blend again.

Advent tea
Anise was the first thing I smelled and tasted in this first steep. There is a sweet cinnamon note lingering too. Can’t taste any of the bitter, smoky mate, and the clove/cardamom you’d expect from a chai is muted as well. This is a nice warming cinnamon, licorice chai. A nice choice for a tea advent!

A few days before Teavana closed their doors, I was given a generous portion of the Samurai Chai Mate. I used to drink this on the daily when I was employed there, so someone gave me a full 2 LB bag of it, since it was bound to be thrown away soon after they closed their store…

I still drink this on the daily (or almost on the daily) at work. I’m nearing the bottom of the tin, but I must admit, there’s yet to be any funk coming from this tea. It’s sweet and light enough on the spice, that it’s not overwhelming. I’ve always enjoyed this blend because of the lack of intensity with the spices. It is enough to make you realize that it’s a chai blend, but it remains moderately laid back enough to make you drink 2-3 16 oz cups within an 8 period (my coworkers always compliment the smell wafting from my desk, too).

I’ll probably give this a final review here, soon…

This was my least favorite tea to date. I would only recommend this tea for people who like a lot of different flavors. None of the flavors contradicted each other, but it is difficult to fully appreciate every flavor when there are so many. If you want a layered tea, this is for you.

This is a minty/lemony/fruity mate/rooibos blend. It’s pretty good. But I’m not quite sure it meets the description for it:

“The way of the warrior is strength, skill, fairness, mercy, power, energy and balance. Our chai embodies this spirit.”

What?

Like, seriously. What. The. Hell. Does. That. Mean.

I know I describe things in a super-crazy way on here sometimes (“this reminds me of a giant field of peppermint patties being romped upon by squirrels”), but that crap isn’t ever THE ACTUAL DESCRIPTION THAT POTENTIAL BUYERS ARE EXPECTED TO READ.

Mercy? How does a tea embody “mercy”?

My best friend keeps this one at her house and hates it. She offered it to me, and I was considering taking her up on it, and lo and behold, mtchyg had it in his care package to me. I like this one, but I don’t love it. It’s not “bae,” as the kids are saying these days.

It tastes really minty to me, which might be the cinnamon meeting the lemongrass or something, because mint isn’t listed in the ingredients. I hate mint. Which is vaguely ironic because there’s a HUGE patch of mint in my yard. One of my coworkers loves mojitos, so I bring her mint before her parties. Another friend occasionally swings by my yard instead of the grocery store. (“HERBS ARE EXPENSIVE, LEAH.”) I use the mint occasionally to clean my garbage disposal (throw a bunch down there and run it — totally does the trick). But it never goes into my body.

Sorry for that digression. Turns out I had a lot to say about samurai and mint today.

Sipdown 93/395 on this sample from the EU TTB many moons ago.

Weirdly, I think that this might be quite a short tasting note purely because there is so much flavour! It’s a little overwhelming and nothing particularly stands out to the point where I could write about it. It’s more a general cacophony of fruits and spices. Brewing, the scent was overwhelmingly cinnamony to begin with, but this mellowed out the longer it steeped and some tropical fruit notes began to poke their way through. When I took my first sip I was taken aback by how sweet it was, particularly since it doesn’t have any added sugar or stevia, so I’m drinking my cup plain. The flavour profile is basically: spicy chai in the foreground, citrus and tropical fruits in the background adding a twist to the blend. More specifically I do think that the cinnamon is the most dominant of the chai flavours, but it’s more mellow than I expected based on the scent and blends well with the other spices. I can’t pick out any individual fruits in the sip, though there is a pineapple note which lingers longer than the others in the aftertaste. Though I am enjoying my mug I wouldn’t seek out more as it is confusing my tastebuds a little, and it’s actually a little more on the mellow side than I had expected for a mate chai.