David Rio

A review of Organic Masala Chai by David Rio Fine Teas

Company: David Rio Fine Teas
Tea Name: Organic Masala Chai
Tea Type/Varietal: Chai powder
Region:
Steeping Vessel/Amt. Leaf: cup / teaspoon
Plucking Season:
Liquor Color: cinnamon/ ground Cumin
Leaf Characteristics:

1st Steeping:
Water temperature: 200 Fahrenheit
Time: 2 minute

I made for myself some hot chai by simply mixing 1 heaping tablespoon of this Masala Chai with some boiled water and stirring it vigorously so that it would froth. The chai’s aroma fills the air with allspice, nutmeg, cardamom, cloves and cinnamon and it is a lovely cinnamon color or more like that of ground cumin.

I like the taste as well. I am pretending that I am having a cup of hot chocolate except it is full of spices and quite zesty. In all this is very warm and enjoyable cup of Masala Chai.

A review of Organic Masala Chai Tea by David Rio

Date: 11/06/2012
Company: David Rio
Tea Name: Organic Masala Chai
Tea Type/ Chai
Region: India
Steeping Vessel/Amt. Leaf: cup/ fine powder
Plucking Season:
Liquor Color: warm caramel
Leaf Characteristics:

1st Steeping:
Water temperature: 200 Fahrenheit
Time: 5 minutes

Note: I wanted a cup of this spice milky tea today since I was thinking for having a cup of cacao, purely. I took one teaspoon of the sweetly fine powder and add this in my mug and pour the very hot water and stir and stirred until the granules were evenly blended /disappearing in my cup.

I sip and sip this tea which is so warm and sweet. All the warm, spicy sweet flavors of traditional masala chai are in this blend that I have fixed for myself: there is the cinnamon, ginger and clove vying for attention with the cardamom seemingly in the background cloying at my taste buds.

This tea is such a delight on this very cold day and I feel somewhat secured while holding this cup of warmth in my hand. I am sorry as I finish this chai and so to passes the moment of having obtained creature comfort/ bliss even, if only for a few moments.

There will have to be another time then, since there is more of this chai in its tin.

A review of Organic Masala Chai Tea by David Rio Fine Teas

Date: 09/24/2012
Company: David Rio Fine Teas
Tea Name: Organic Masala Chai
Tea Type/Varietal: Black / Green Matcha
Region:
Steeping Vessel/Amt. Leaf: small pan / 2 tea spoon
Plucking Season:
Liquor Color: Golden rosy brown
Leaf Characteristics: Added to this classic blend is the organic matcha, the ceremonial green tea of Japan. Matcha contains more than three times the antioxidants of other green teas, making this cup as heartful as it is satisfying.

1st Steeping:
Water temperature: 200 Fahrenheit
Time: 5 minutes

Note: After another of many morning walks, upon returning I suddenly felt I wanted something like a cup of cocoa. Instead I reach on the shelf for my tin of David Rio’s Masala Chai. I purchased this chai back in the summer during a store visit to Williams-Sonoma http://www.williams-sonoma.com) in Copley Square, Boston, MA. I must say I had forgotten about it until having moved and with re-arranging of things I came across it. So today, I took my small pan with a small can of condensed milk and one half cup of water; I put the water to boil and added the milk to it and after opening the Masala Chai (which is wrapped in a gold thin foil-like coffee bag) and smelling very rich. The granules are fine, like brown sugar but grainier in texture.

It is lovely to see a real chai, not a tea bag one. I put in one teaspoon into the pan’s milk/water mixture and decided to add one more tea spoon, making for one large spoonful of the chai.

I covered it and left to come fully boil. It is lovely to see when one removes the lid from the pan…it is a golden froth and when I pour this into my mug the chai’s aroma is all cinnamon, ginger and cloves that I recognized immediately.

I cannot wait to take a first sip. Burning my tongue, I continue with sipping it as I adjust to the tea’s heat and eventually I am able to swallow and feel the golden froth descend pleasantly as I swallow and sip some more.

I wanted this cup of chai to match what I have seen from tea vendors like Golden-Moon Tea. He once had a lovely photo of his favorite cup of chai. And color wise I did accomplish Marcus’s cup of chai.

Having this cup of chai while enveloped in one’s favorite throw and a journal or a good book out on the patio is one of the ideal ways to enjoy and cherish this chai tea.

I came in from the cold wanting a cup of hot-cocoa, instead I fixed a cup of warmly hot Masala chai, and it was wonderfully inviting and invigorating. I only had one large cup of it.

I am happy to have finally tried this chai. Thank you Williams-Sonoma for carrying such fine teas!

This tea is a perfect blend of spices and creamy flavor. Chai spice teas usually make me think of autumn and are great for that season, but David Rio’s vanilla is definitely an autumn and winter tea. It’s not overpowering and perfectly sweet as is without sweetener (or sugar, if you go that route).

This is the very last sample from our tea swap with Krystaleyn. Le sigh. I shouldn’t be sighing, I have a box of samples to get through sitting right next to me.

This would be totally awesome iced I think. It’s pretty good hot but all that berry action makes me think it’s perfect for a refreshing drink on a hot summer day. Blueberry seems to be the strongest flavor here with a pomegranate sidekick. There is some thing a little different with this blueberry. I think it may be that acai berry showing up here. Very good berry mix. I can’t really taste the green tea but that’s okay berry drinks are awesome. Thanks again Krystaleyn!

This was the last sample from our exchange with the always wonderful Krystaleyn!

Although this isn’t something I’d normally pick out on my own, I’m glad I got a chance to try it. It may just be the years of being a “counter-culture” nerd, but I’d probably immediately gloss over something labelled as “Organic Power Fruit Tea”. It’s just too many trendy buzzwords at once… instantly puts me back in the shoes of being an angsty teenager who hated anything popular. I’ve grown past that, I swear.

The star of the show on this tea is definitely the blueberry, with a little bit of pomegranate flavoring, and a little of what may be acai. In all honesty, if it didn’t say it had green tea in it, I would have thought this was just a fruit infusion. Not that this would be a bad thing.

The tea is sweet with just a little bit of a tang, but not too much, just enough to round out the flavor. Done a little bit differently, I could really enjoy this tea. Oooh, I bet it’s good iced!

This blend of David Rio’s chai is without sugar and caffeine and I can taste a big difference between this Flamingo Vanilla version and his original Tiger Spice Chai blend. A BIG difference. I don’t like this one near as much as the other (which earns a sold 100 from me, along with only one other tea). We bought this because my mother wanted to try my tiger chai but wanted one without the caffeine. Unfortunately for us, we cannot find the version of David Rio’s which is only caffeine free (which is called Giraffe Decaf Chai, in case you are interested), so we bought this one instead. It was a big disappointment for me because I have a long history with the Tiger Spice blend (it was the original chai tea blend from Borders back before they brought in Starbucks!)
I won’t be buying this one again, and neither will my mother, but I would try the Giraffe one.

Love, love, love, love, love this ‘tea’. I used to work at Borders and this is THE EXACT blend of the original borders chai ‘tea’. I use tea in quotes because I never make this with water (and neither did Borders). I make this tea just like I do with hot chocolate — heat up a mug of milk and add in this chai blend, stir and enjoy the guilty pleasure of it. I don’t drink it a lot because even using 2% milk, this is too fattening for me. The blend of this chai is utterly perfect: It is not too sweet and each of the amounts of the various spices (cinnamon, clove, cardamom and ginger) are perfectly in tune with each other. I will constantly have some of this in my cupboard. Love!

This is my current favorite chai mix, I like sweet and this has the perfect mix for my taste buds. It’s easy to add to (I stir it with a cinnamon stick), and isn’t overpowering. I love it!

This tea is fine. Nothing spectacular. Nothing is really needed to the dark, dark colored tea to make it palatable, but I did add a scootch of raw sugar. This tea is fine to carry in your purse and make your own tea at the gas station when you stop with your own mug and their hot water. Maybe one of those flavored shots of creamer would help it.

I am enjoying this for the first time. It’s a beautiful dark cola color with enough of it’s own sweetness to need none added. I love that in a tea. I’m sitting in a coffee shop in a town I’ve not been to in years, in fact, last time I was here this was new. It’s a thrill to see it thriving and offering decent, albeit not loose-leaf, tea. This would be a great tea to carry in my bag for the road as the light flavor needs nothing added. It is not a strong tea and I don’t know if I just didn’t steep in long enough or it is simply mild. Regardless, it is a pleasant afternoon tea.

I made this up with half hot water, half milk to make it a bit thicker since the last David Rio chai I had (made with just water) I found to be too watery. The end result is surprisingly fruity-tasting – mango isn’t normally something I’d associate with chai, but in this case they go quite well together. The spices in the chai are rather tame, partly so they don’t drown out the fruit I guess, but I can still tell that this is tea is a chai. It’s not too sweet and I think adding the milk was a good move because it made the mix rich and creamy without adding too many extra calories. Yummy!

I absolutely adore this stuff. Adore it. Tonight, I got it blended perfectly: no chunks of powder that didn’t get dissolved, just the right temperature. I really, really want to try some of the other flavors by this company. This is a vanilla, warm latte-like chai that’s DECAF!! Oh, yeah.

Nom, nom, nom.

The bright pink of this packaging called to me to find out what it was…chai tea!! Then I looked at the name…Flamingo?! They also had Orca Spice and the Tiger Spice chais, and for a moment I had a very hard time deciding…until I read that this one is decaf. Decaf!!! I had to get it.

It is an instant chai powder. I mixed according to package directions, 2 TBSP to 6 oz hot water.

I could get down on this stuff. It’s rich and creamy, strongly vanilla, but I can still taste the tea along with the spices. If you like really spicy chais, I’d say this one isn’t for you. The spices are definitely there, and well-balanced, but not strong/spicy enough for a true chai afficianado. As for me, I’m going to definitely be checking into the other flavors (there’s a Toucan one with mango on the website)!!

One of the random teabags that Dan sent to me. I really like this one, can’t say as I’ve had a good apple-flavored tea before. This was juicy and slightly tart, very much like a Gala or Pink Lady apple, though not tart enough for Granny Smith.

Steep Information:
Amount: 1 and 1/2 tablespoon powder
Water: 1/3 cup boiling water
Additives: 1 tablespoon sweetened condensed milk
Served: Cold, hot dumped over ice cubes

Tasting Notes:
Steeped Tea Smell: coconut, sugar
Flavor: really sweet, then black tea
Body: Full
Aftertaste: sugar
Liquor: dark orange

I enjoy having thai iced tea and coffee while out so I couldn’t resist this when I saw it in the store.

Images: http://amazonv.blogspot.com/2010/06/david-rio-instant-powder-black-tea.html

This is the best flavour I have ever tasted, it is elegant and afrodisiatic, it turned me adict to it

I discovered a sample pack of different David Rio chai mixes in my cupboard today and I remembered the last time that I drank this particular mix (years ago) I wasn’t super thrilled, so I decided to try my recommendations in the old review and try it with hot milk instead of water this time.

There’s really nothing that even remotely says ‘green tea’ about this mix – even the colour is pale, milky-looking. The flavour is all sweet, creamy vanilla with a few spices thrown in. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a tasty treat and using milk really brings out the vanilla, but I was hoping for a something a bit more…authentic, I suppose.

When I was in Vancouver for the Olympics I stopped by the Blue Teapot, which is a tea shop that’s sort of an old favorite of mine, located in the Lonsdale Quay. The owner had gotten in a bunch of new merchandise in anticipation of the tourist influx and he was selling some of the David Rio chai mixes.

I’ve never tried any of David Rio’s teas but having some experience with Oregon Chai and Second Cup’s chai mixes (which can be diabetic coma-inducing) I asked the owner to tell me which one he thought was the least sweet of the bunch. He pointed out this one and since I thought it sounded interesting (I’ve never had a green tea chai latte) I got it.

Okay…the cute name might have been a factor aswell. ;P

I was expecting something a little bit like sweetened matcha…yeah. When I opened the package the powdery contents inside were a pale yellow colour and they smelled like one of those vanilla pudding mixes.

The ‘texture’ of the tea in my mouth feels a little off. The package instructions say to use hot water but I think I’d like this better with milk instead. It’s just too thin with water. It tastes sweet but not sickly sweet, thankfully. I can distinctly taste the vanilla and the spices which are a good mix – I do wish I could pick up more of a green tea flavour though. It’s there, but you have to look for it in each sip.

It’s not bad, I might buy it again if I come across it and it isn’t too expensive, but it’s not anything that’s likely to become a regular staple in my cupboard. I prefere whole-leaf chais anyway.

Did they discontinue this wonderful green tea? It’s a very perfumed tea, with bright blue cornflower blossoms and bits of dried wild papaya and pineapple. I’m a sucker for cornflower. I’m always so amused by seeing blue (!) leaves in my tea or bits of dried fruit. Sweet and fruity, and very delicate.