Chelsea Chai

Oh good, back in I-love-all-Yumchaa-teas mode now. Thanks to cteresa for the sample! I didn’t both reading the notes for ingredients for this one, just assumed it was a green chai. I prefer chai as proper industrial-strength black or the other end of the (caffeine) scale and rooibos, but my mind was open to a Yumchaa green chai, and this turned out to be lovely. I love ginger, cardamom and pepper, and love them together (usually with cinnamon), I love Yumchaa’s green tea bases (this one is sencha) and I love spearmint, but I’d never have thought the spearmint would go so well with the other tastes.

It’s going to be interesting, choosing from the growing list of tried-and-loved teas for the next Yumchaa order! Thanks again, T!

I am a Yumchaa fan since I accidentally found one of their market stalls a few years ago. In the meanwhile I have made my way through a lot of their teas – I might be on my 4th or 5th 100 gr pack of Berry Berry Nice for example! Some have been samples from friends or tried in their tea shops, and a few of the new ones I never had a chance yet but I have been trying as many of their teas as I could. This is one of their old tea blends which I left for last. A friend (obrigada!) brought this for me with my nth package of Berry Berry Nice all the way from London and oh it was a great seasonal choice. And a tip : those two packages together smell wonderfully. Unbelievably good. one of these days I will even try brewing them together. Might be a mess, but the scent is just too alluring to not try.

so Christmas and this chai, I picked this by accident because I am so into chai right now and I had never tried this one, but this is IMO a sort of perfect Christmas tea – the spices making it festive, the spearmint candy making it uncloying, and the Yumchaa nice sencha base underneath it all. A really really nice take on green tea with mint or green chai or christmas tea, however you would like to class it, it´s a good one!

Somehow it took me ages to try this tea, and I finally did last week. I’ve pretty much been sipping it since. At first sip, I just tasted mint, but a more subtle, gentle mint than in a pure mint tea (I’m guessing that’s because of the green tea). And then the spices sort of come in ‘from the background’, almost like an aftertaste but not quite. It adds up to a very soothing yet rather subtly complex tea. Also – it’s a perfect cake tea, especially for non-chocolatey cake. The tea makes the cake better, and the cake makes the tea even more perfect than it already is. Yup, I like this one a lot.