Vahdam Teas

This was JUST OKAY. I expected an extreme amount of sweet cinnamon, possibly because I have been spoiled by other similar teas. The cinnamon here though was mostly earthy tasting. Not really sweet. Only a hint of spices for a chai. Maybe this is because there isn’t much in the teabag… definitely not as much as I would usually add to an infuser.

Reading the notes before brewing the tea is sometimes a plus, sometimes it makes me not feeling right, but all tea deserves love and at least one attempt brewing it. Thank you Kaylee for sending me a sample of 10 grams, I have used a half for my steeping today and…

Oh boy this is sweet. Some bitter notes there, probably the turmeric, swamp water like color, very dusty ingredients. Nope, I didn’t pieces as in picture by vendor. Nothing like that.

Luckily steeped short and with green tea temperature. But even though I have finished it, I am not a fan. Actually, I will probably finish it fast to get rid of this tea.
Ruined by stevia, for sure. Maybe there is more stevia than green tea itself. Hard to say.

The first time I had this, it was hearty and sweet and well-rounded. It was quite a nice spice combination without being at all spicy. The second time, it tasted plainer, but still high quality and tasty with milk and sugar. The TTB only had two servings in it, but I hope to come across this one again!

I’ve been using this pouch up as a cold brew as that’s how I prefer this one.

Has the bitter aftertaste that some green teas have for me and im not a fan

This was the sachet that I drank on the plane ride home from Vegas. It was a brutally long feeling ride (even though it was technically shorter than the one to Vegas), but I think mostly because everything from my waist down was just so sore from walking the expo and up and down the strip so much over the last few days. My feet were blistered, and my knees were practically throbbing. So, sitting in the cramped plane in the same position got to be hell very quickly.

I didn’t much enjoy this tea either, though I can’t help but wonder how much of that is because I was in such a sour mood already. The cocoa note was fine, though powdery and a little bit too “raw” tasting. The thing that really got to me was the musty earthiness of the ginger. It just didn’t taste very fresh at all.

Can definitely taste the stevia. And not in a great way

Pretty good earl grey. smooth and no bitterness

It’s an ok tea that has a little too much ginger for my liking

Vadham call this a “low caffeine” blend, which seems to put it in no-man’s land between an herbal and a good proper cuppa, but it tastes rather like a classic chamomile Sleepytime type tea. I get only a minimal hint of the green tea at all.

There is a lot going on here. Heavy on the chamomile, then pops out the orange-peel citrus and an indistinct mint note, probably due to the blending of both spearmint and peppermint. There’s also a good whack of lemongrass.

It’s not bad by any means, but there are a lot of competing sensations. It’s well-balanced but I feel I’ve tasted this before. I am experimenting with using “low caffeine” teas between my usual blacks so I don’t start vibrating, but I feel there are a lot of herbals with this flavour profile, so I’ll stick to those.

Oh: don’t oversteep this one. The previously undetected green tea will turn to battery acid after minute 4.

A new brand to me, Vadham. This one’s an herbal tea, which I am approaching cautiously since I personally do not like anise or fennel.

The ingredients are: blend of Hibiscus, Cardamom, Fennel, Chamomile, Star Anise, Rose Petals, Blue Corn Flower and Rose Extracts.

It brews to a nice pinkish colour due to the hibiscus and smells strongly of fennel/anise. The scent reminds me of a high-class room freshening spray, the sort that comes in a small glass bottle from a fancy boutique. Oh dear.

Despite the aroma, the hibiscus and rose are the dominant flavours. The fennel and anise are very present, though. The cardamom is barely a whisper. If you like these notes, this would be a solid choice. It does get quite an ashy taste as it cools, so it’s best done piping hot.

While anise and fennel are two of my most-disliked ingredients in tea, I managed to make it through this cuppa. It’s a nice quality, even if not to my personal taste. I am looking forward to trying their other selections.

Vadham also states they are climate neural and plastic neutral, as well as donating 1% of revenue towards education in India, so that’s a nice bonus.

The Strange VariaTea TTB arrived this week, and I’ve been having the best time! Not with this tea though :P I’m always attracted to pumpkin spice, but here I don’t understand why there’s so much turmeric. The rest of the spices are sort of warming and pleasant, but they’re overwhelmed by the savory, bitter turmeric.

From my September Sips by.

I’m honestly not a Darjeeling lover, so this was just okay. It was very smooth and subtly grassy with some bready and woody notes, and a touch of honey peeking through at the end of the sip. Pleasant enough tea, just not my personal favorite style. If I want a smooth black tea, I’m more likely to reach for Chinese or Taiwanese varieties.

I had a sample of this tea from the advent calendar. I was kind of nervous to try this tea because of the combination of ingredients. I usually do not like rose in teas but I love the rose teas from Vahdam. The rose is not strong at all. It goes really well with the hibiscus and chai spices.

Absolutely not a Cookies & Cream flavour…

I guess it does taste like chocolate which is sorta half of the equation, but when you complete the blend formula with turmeric instead of cream it produces a drastically different final product. IDK why I went with a half hearted math metaphor, but here we are. Anyway, turmeric and cocoa is not terrible together – it’s soothing, semi-sweet and kind of earthy with a denseness to it I’m not mad it. Actually, because of how powdery all these ingredients are, it does literally have a dense and thick mouthfeel which is fine.

It’s just… not close to what it’s name for and that’s really disappointing.

What an odd little chai!  And not just because the fragrance here is STRONG which is unexpected if the spices are mainly cinnamon, cardamom, saffron strands and almond.   The flavor is much lighter.  I wish the flavor is more unique than it is.  I wanted more almond, and really more cinnamon and cardamom in the mug to really be a cup of comfort.  This was really quite bland for such a new tea.  Maybe I was too careful with the one minute steep.  The second steep is savory to me or a bit floral, but also kind of like lemon verbena.  Possibly this is the saffron?  Really no notes of cinnamon, cardamom OR almond.  So this seems like a fail to me.
Steep #1 // 1 teaspoon for a full mug // 32 minutes after boiling // 1 minute steep
Steep #2 // 29 min after boiling // 2 min

From my gifted box set. I needed a mint tea yesterday for a headache. So I thought I’d try a new mint tea! It seems there is plenty of mint with this green tea, proportion wise. And it does what it says in the name. It’s green tea. It’s mint. It’s fine! It tastes a little bit catnip-like though, which is odd if this is a fresher mint than all those ancient mint teas I’m usually drinking.
Steep #1 // 30 minutes after boiling // 1 minute steep
Steep #2 // 30 minutes after boiling // 3 min

Ashmanra’s sipdown challenge – February 2023 Tea #5 – An afternoon tea

Quick cup, no resteeps — that says “afternoon tea” to me!  This is from my gifted set of ten teas.  I’m not sure if the water I used was too hot.  I figured Vahdam might have added turmeric to the matcha to disguise that the matcha isn’t great.  Really, I can’t even tell there is turmeric here other than a slightly yellowish color to the matcha.  Instead, it’s a marine vegetal matcha — neither great nor terrible.

Sipped yesterday morning in the lab while setting up for a tasting.

It was my first tea of the day, and there’s something about having an Earl Grey as your first cuppa in the morning that always feels just a little bit “more right” than other teas. However, it was a busy morning so the extra bit of spice that made this an even bolder and more intense cup gave it a bit more of a flavour push that amped me up a bit – in a good way.

It’s certainly not a favourite tea and I find that there’s an almost brassy metallic undertone to the bergamot used here (but I get that in a lot of EG), but situationally… it was a good cup!

I have to say, I’m pretty disappointed in this one. I think this might be the first and only Vadham tea I’ve had and it did not live up to my expectations. The aroma and flavor is more cardamom than rose, which is find because I love cardamom. I do wish the rose was more present though and not overwhelmed by the other. My biggest complaint is that this tastes very watered down. It’s not even that the base is light, I think. It’s just watery. I’ll double the tea next time, for sure. One teaspoon was obviously not enough for me. I have a whole tin of this, so hopefully I’ll find a way to enjoy it. Holding my rating until I can try it again with more tea leaves.

Edit: I just realized this is my 1,984th tasting note which gives me a bit of a thrill because I was born in 1984. This’ll only happen once so I thought I should make note of it!

Taking a whiff of the dry leaf – oo boy.  Very HEALTHY earthy scent, which is probably mostly the turmeric.  The flavor is much the same, but also stevia.  The stevia and the turmeric are a BIT much together — like the stevia is supposed to make up for the earthiness.   The stevia and turmeric is about all I can taste here.  I can’t even taste the mint, let alone the cardamom.  Good to find out though:  fresh stevia is still really bad for these tastebuds and it isn’t a matter of aged stevia.
Steep #1 // 1 heaping teaspoon for a full mug // 33 minutes after boiling // 2 minute steep
Steep #2 // 30 minutes after boiling // 2-3 min

This was part of a set that I got as a holiday gift. I made this as a stovetop chai with oat milk and honey using the double boil method. It was tasty enough, but the spices were very mild. Perhaps they’d be stronger if drunk straight without additives, or prepared as a latte (i.e. with less milk)?

As a side note – this isn’t a reflection on the tea but is something that I want to note for myself for future awareness: black tea doesn’t always agree with me, which is why I tend to avoid it. That’s been a little better lately, and I find that terroir tends to make a difference. But this particular tea seems to be one that my stomach doesn’t love. So probably not one to restock.

A gifted tea!  A set of ten green teas from Vahdam – the perfect sized samples for me, as they are each a few servings worth.  I started with this one — which… depending on the bergamot used, could have been the most disappointing of the ten teas in the bunch.  Not so!  To be fair, I did drink this while eating some lemon meringue pie, so the tastebuds might have melded these flavors together.   It’s an intriguing green Earl… this bergamot really seems to pair well with this particular green tea which is a nice surprise!  I’m generally not a reacher for bergamot on anything other than a solid black tea.  But this is a nice one.  A unique tasting, balanced bergamot on a tasty green.  Second steep was also great – not an overpowering bergamot, which is never good on a green base.
Steep #1 // 1 heaping teaspoon for a full mug // 32 minutes after boiling // 2 minute steep
Steep #2 // 31 min after boiling // 2 min

Sipdown (2027)!

So Vahdam sent me an advent this year without my knowledge before it was sent out, even though I’ve asked multiple times to be removed from their influencer/social media distribution list. For several reasons, I didn’t want to do the advent – so what I ended up doing was ‘harvesting" out some sachets from any flavours I hadn’t tried. The rest of the advent was left in the office kitchen for other people to enjoy.

I am always a little intrigued when Vahdam steps outside of their comfort zone of turmeric/Chai blends – some of my favourites when I did do their advent a few years ago were these more differentiated blends. This one is okay, but nothing to write home about either. It mostly tasted like strawberry jello but with a little bit of cinnamon heat to the finish. I wasn’t mad at it, and something about the red fruit/hibiscus with cinnamon almost gave me mulled wine vibes. But, like, if you made your mulled wine with ingredients available at a dollar store.