From the queue
This one came from the first round of the European Travelling Teabox. I was right in the middle of chai-curious phase due to a pleasant one that Scheherazade had shared with me earlier when I received the box, so I nabbed this one. It’s a rooibos base and it has a really interesting name to boot. How can one make something taste like cola without actually putting cola in it? How can chai spices and cola even be combined in the first place? And hot cola, how’s that gonna work? I am intrigued!
Intrigued, yes, but also needing, it seems, a bit of courage to actually try it.
I have finally done so. I made a cup with half boiling water and half milk which I had heated in the microwave. Plenty of leaf in a filterbag and then a good long steep. About twice as long as I thought I would do because I forgot about it. I got distracted, you see, by writing this. As it’s a rooibos, though, I expect it was only to my advantage. I’ve found that you can’t really oversteep rooibos. They sort of level out, so the only result you get from forgetting it is that it starts to cool down.
It definitely has cinnamon in it, and in combination with the warm milk it smells strongly of rice porridge with cinnamon sugar and a lump of butter on it. (Which is very traditional around Christmas, but I tend to find it rather cloying) I also saw that the leaf had some cardamom pods in, but I can’t pick up anything in that regard.
Doesn’t smell particularly cola-y, I have to say. Or rooibos-y for that matter.
It doesn’t taste like cola either. Again, it’s warm milk and cinnamon, and a little bit of a cardamom floral touch. (Cardamom has a floral flavour, I think) There’s supposed to be ginger as well, apparently, but I can’t find any. Mysterious, really, since ginger is one of those things where very little can be too much for me. I can pick up the rooibos base, not so much because I can taste rooibos, but more because I can’t taste black tea.
I have to say I don’t think it lives up to the name at all. It’s pleasant and I’m enjoying my cup, but it just doesn’t taste like cola.
