13 Tasting Notes
This is without question the most bitter thing I have ever put in my mouth. I’m very sensitive to bitter flavors, and this one was just too much. The bag smelled like maté, a Chilean beverage which tastes like alfalfa and tire treads, but the tea turned out to be much more bitter than maté, which I didn’t think was possible.
I took the first cup straight, and steeped it for only 3 minutes because it smelled so strongly. That first cup practically ate through the lining of my stomach. I steeped the next cup for only 2.5 minutes and I added milk and sugar, which did not cut the bitterness at all. For the third cup I tried honey, but I just couldn’t make it drinkable.
This was the first chai I ever tasted, and I was very impressed at first, but that faded somewhat as I grew more accustomed to drinking other straight black teas. I began to realize that the balance of this tea is off. There’s too much cinnamon and not enough black tea here. Even so, sometimes a cup of hot cinnamon water can be very soothing, especially when mixed with an appropriate amount of milk and sugar.
This chai also works well when you mix it with other teas and tea additives. I guess that’s the real thing to know about this tea: it works well when you mix it with other things. As a stand-alone tea it’s a little boring. Turn this into a chai latte, an iced chai, or some other chai concoction and you’ve really got something.
This is an absolute middle-of-the-road Earl Grey. It’s not bad, but it isn’t particularly fantastic either. The sachet boasts of hand-picked tea leaves and real bergamot imported from Italy, but it actually tastes less authentic than Twinings, which lists “bergamot flavoring” as an ingredient rather than actual bergamot.
The bag smells nice, but I’ve been fooled by some very nice-smelling bags before. The problem here is that the nice aroma from the bag really doesn’t show in the cup. If you steep it for too long, it gets bitter, and if you steep it for a reasonable amount of time, the flavor is weak. At best, this tea will remind you that you enjoy drinking higher quality Earl Greys, but I assume it would suffice in a pinch.
