Vahdam Teas
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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.
Flavors: Bread, Dry Grass, Honey, Musty, Smooth, Woody
Preparation
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.
Flavors: Cardamom, Hibiscus, Rose
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!
Flavors: Cardamom
Preparation
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
Flavors: Stevia, Turmeric
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.
Tea from India, especially black tea, is a frequent offender for tummy trouble for me. Tea from China much less so.
Nice to know I’m not the only one! I’ve often wondered why – maybe it’s the sulfites in black tea? But that wouldn’t explain the regional differences, unless Indian black teas tend to have higher concentrations of sulfites. Somewhere there’s a tea scientist who knows the answer, surely.
I think the terroir and the species of plant makes a different. Indian tea seems to be higher in polyphenols perhaps? Harney and Sons says that Assam tea leaves actual particulate matter more than any other and that could be part of it. India is usual Camellia Sinensis assamica and China is usually Camellia Sinensis Sinensis except for in the south where there is assamica varietal. The way the different countries typically process their tea could be affecting it, too.
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.
Advent tea!
I haven’t seen the sun in several days it seems(probably not true) and its been raining all day today. I shouldn’t complain so much because the upper midwest is getting hammered by snow and the storm doesn’t seem in a hurry to move on out.
So this minty green tea is refreshing. Is it spearmint or is it peppermint? I have both in my cupboard separately as well as green tea, but I’m not sure I’d blend it this well. Thanks for sending it Lexie!
Flavors: Peppermint, Spearmint
Advent Tea!
This one isn’t bad, there’s an underlying sharpness to this nutty Darjeeling, and the second steep smoothed that away. But it’s a rather dull and uninspired take on darjeeling, not bad enough to throw out, and not interesting enough to seek out to drink again. Thanks for sending it for me to try, Lexie!
Flavors: Astringent, Nutty
Strange VariaTEA TTB: Tea 29
This was day 1 of my DIY advent calendar and Roswell Strange hit the nail on the head with her tasting note. It’s spiced but in the wrong ways with an emphasis on turmeric. That made this very earthy and really not overly enjoyable. Add in the ginger and it doesn’t get any better.
Day 1 of my Vahdam tea advent calendar.
Actually, it’s not. Instead of having the teas individually packaged per day, there is just a bunch of wrapped teabags in a box. I chose this one because it is herbal and I have had enough caffeine today. Plus my tummy is a little unhappy from supper, so I thought the ginger would be good.
I do not know what the ingredients are. The packet says “Blend of warming ginger and roasted cocoa.” It brews up a little cloudy, which isn’t unusual for chocolate teas. My nose is completely clogged and so are my ears—the last hanger-on from the nasty cold/sinus infection/ear infection I picked up in mid-November—so I don’t taste much of this. I think I am getting a mild ginger heat. As it cooled I found myself enjoying it more. It has a sweetness that tastes natural (as opposed to Stevia) and that may be from the ginger and/or chocolate. I don’t really taste the chocolate though. Maybe if I had a sense of smell I could taste it.
As it is I am giving this tea a cautious recommendation. It will not go looking for it but I was able to drink the cup.
That sounds more like a selection box than an advent calendar!
@Nattie I am disappointed. Part of the fun of the advent calendar was the surprise each day. I should have figured something was wrong though, since it was only $19.99 USD
Yes, I think they were being lazy and missing the point of the advent calendar, instead just throwing samplers together
I would have been disappointed too, it’s not really what they were advertising, regardless of the price.
Funny story…one of the younglings at work is also a fledgling teaist and was so excited when she ordered herself a Black Friday Vadham loose leaf sampler. Until she got to this one.
Today, she carried it into my office, almost at arm’s length, with a woebegone expression. “I hate not liking tea, but I can’t stand this one. Could you use it?” I laughed out loud because I think that was precisely my first gut reaction to lapsang souchong many years ago.
That said, though it’s not a deliberate go-to for me, I fired up the office kettle and steeped a trial cup. The leaves are long and luxurious, and the smoke strength is actually mild enough to suit me. Especially nice with a couple of snagged biscotti: the holiday office snacking season is upon us.
This is my favorite rose black tea. I usually do not like rose in black tea most of the time it too strong. But this tea is perfect because they add other ingredients like cardamom, pistachio, almonds snd saffron. The rose is not too strong. I am enjoying it as a latte with almond milk but it is good plain too.
Flavors: Cardamom, Rose
Oops All Pumpkin (8/10)!
Oof, just nope! This one was very aggressively spiced and not in the right ways. Firstly, turmeric has no business being in a pumpkin spice tea – and especially not in this quantity. It was very raw, earthy and bitter tasting on top of just being too heavy handed in general. Also just way too much ginger.
This was my bottom tea of the day.
Tea Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/CkYo7Xju3Rv/
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iTAkRHGbuM
Another (loosely) Halloween themed comedic song by BDG, this time a Western instead of a disco song. Way more enjoyable than the tea itself…
Love, love, love this blend! I tried this as a stovetop chai ( first attempt) and it was incredible. It was sweet, spicy, and cozy. I used 2 cups of water and 2 cups of milk with 3 table spoons of the chai blend and 2 tablespoons of Splenda/ sugar
Flavors: Cardamom, Cinnamon, Malt, Spicy, Sweet
Preparation
For a couple of days I had been thinking about making a mojito type drink with tea. Since I figured other flavours might stand out more, I decided to go with a plain black tea I was pretty meh about trying. This was that tea and I made it over ice with mint leaves and lime juice. I then topped that all with some pineapple sparkling water. After a taste, I realized I was a bit heavy handed with the lime juice so I opted to add a splash of vanilla syrup to offset the tart citrus. That actually rounded out the flavour perfectly making this bright, sweet and super refreshing. The tea provided a solid foundation for the other flavours to thrive. I’d have it like this again but also I should probably try it plain once.
