52Teas Send Message

On The First Day of Christmas . . . of the teas that won enough votes to make it into the 12 Teas of Christmas box, this tea received the fewest votes – just enough to earn its way into the box. It actually tied with one other black tea – the Mayan Chocolate Chai blend which ended up being the featured reblend for this past November. Because I wasn’t sure which I should feature in the holiday box and which I should blend as a featured reblend, I just reblended both at the same time and told myself that I’d let my tastebuds decide when it comes time to do the taste test.

And in a sense, that’s exactly what happened. When it came time to do the taste test for each tea, this one was ready to roll – and the Mayan Chocolate Chai needed a bit more tweaking before I was ready to release it.

I really like this chai. I find it’s a different tasting chai depending upon the temperature of the tea. When it’s still quite hot, you get a nice hit of spices and some vanilla. Some caramel too, but the caramel isn’t as strong as it is as the tea cools. The more the tea cools, the stronger the caramel (and vanilla) become.

Either hot or cold, it’s really quite nice and comforting.

PS: You might notice on my blog I refer to this blend as “Caramel Vanilla Chai v.2” – the “v.2” is because this is bit different than the original. Specifically, the original version of this tea (Frank’s version) was a fairly fine ground chai. This also utilizes a CTC blend of black teas, but the leaf size is definitely larger than I recall the ground leaves were in the original. But, I didn’t label this tea as a v.2. And, I figured in an effort to eliminate confusion, I wouldn’t add a whole new listing with the v.2.