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Candy Cane Lane by Celestial Seasonings is crazy delicious! I imagine some earnest hippie woman at Celestial Seasonings HQ in Colorado, losing sleep, trying again and again to get the blend just right and finally collapsing, beaming, sipping this tea from a handmade pottery mug. First of all, it has a subtle green tea taste, which gives this tea a little body so it’s not all herbal. Second of all, the blend of mint, vanilla and cinnamon is just perfection. A candy cane in a cup! After getting a sample of this (thank you Josie Jade!) I admit I’ve been to three stores, hoping that there will be a bin of holiday teas on sale, but no luck. Fortunately, one can order Candy Cane Lane online, so I won’t have to wait for Christmas to come around again.

The combination of green tea, lemon, and ginseng makes this tea a new chilly weather favorite. The flavors are a nice balance of earthy, tart, and sweet. With my second cup, I added some fresh lemon. Delicious! Celestial Seasonings has a special place in my heart: I loved the boxes when I was a little kid; the illustrations are so magical. I remember drinking Red Zinger and adding lots of honey to it. It’s always nice to discover a new blend of CS tea, and toss it into my grocery cart, and try it out. I’m glad I tried Honey Lemon Ginseng.

Inspired by Grace Makutsi, from Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, this is a, as the name suggests, a citrusy and gingery, rooibos blend. Rooibos and Red Bush: same thing, a shrub in South Africa, the needles of which make this tasty tisane. This has green rooibos, and it is delicious. The citrus and ginger blended with the green rooibos creates a special kind of lemony ginger flavor.

If you are a fan of Alexander McCall Smith’s Number One Ladies Detective Agency series, featuring the wonderful Precious Ramotswe, then you’ll be tempted, as I was, to try this tisane. I’ve tried vanilla rooibos blends before and have found them tasty, but this, this my friends, has the right amount of vanilla. Delicious and indeed comforting, this became an instant favorite of mine at first sip. Green smiley face for sure. Steeped in 6 oz of boiling water, milk added after about 5 minutes of steeping.

I enjoyed this over the top tisane brewed in 6 oz of boiling water, steeped for 5 minutes, with milk and sweetener (drop of pure maple syrup). This combination resulted in what tasted like a strawberry milk chocolate candy.

This loose chai masala highlights a special ingredient: tulsi, which is holy basil. Dried tulsi has a sharp, vegetal flavor; a bit spicy, a tad bitter. It has an elusive, floral, spicy bouquet. This chai masala has assam, it is not caffeine free as I’d originally thought, and includes the usual masala suspects. I purchased it from a tea shop that sells loose tea in large canisters, without the ingredients listed, just the name of the tea, which is then scooped into little brown paper bags. Here is a link to the ingredients so that you’ll know just what is going on in this tea:
http://organicindiausa.com/tulsi-chai-masala-tea-loose-leaf-100g-canister/
When you open the bag, you smell the mixed spices, the sweet assam and the tulsi, which has the appearance of dark green bits. The masala is beautifully balanced: no flavor jumps out and demands all the attention, and that’s so important to me in a chai masala. I used one teaspoon to one cup of water, boiling, in a teapot, and steeped for 3 minutes. The brewing tea had such a lovely fragrance: the tea, spices and tulsi created a unique scent. The result was a light, spicy and sweet cup of tea. I added a drop of pure maple syrup; unorthodox, I know, but it complemented the sweetness of the tea and mellowed the aromatic tulsi. This is definitely a unique chai masala for me, and I’m so glad I added it to my cupboard. Will I ever go to India? I close my eyes and sip this tea and imagine it! Next time I will make this on the stovetop, properly!

Spicy and sweet, this chai is a dessert in a cup. Coconut, cinnamon, ginger and more blend together in perfect harmony. I pick up a kind of butterscotchy flavor. I’m going to go off on a tangent. Are you with me? I have one suggestion: if you feel that rooibos based chais are a little lacking in a sturdy base, go ahead and add some loose rooibos, and add some more time to your steeping. I have found that in general, there is not enough rooibos and that steeping time tends to be under-estimated. If your approach to rooibos is, “where’s the flavor?” just try it: double or triple the amount of rooibos used, whether you are brewing straight up rooibos or a blend such as chai, and add several more minutes to your steeping time. The result is an infusion with more oomph, and a richer mouth feel. This approach is extra important with blends, where the exuberant spices and chunks of deliciousness can crowd out the rooibos, literally. This message has been brought you by The Rooibos Awareness and Appreciation and Tolerance Society (RAATS). Who died and made me queen of all things Rooibos? Well, I could tell you, but…

There are plenty of notes on this tisane, but I did want to add just one comment: I found that if I steeped this closer to 10 + minutes, the flavors mingled and mellowed and it tasted rich and sweet. The first time I brewed this, I stopped at around 4 minutes. For me, there was a marked increase in yumminess with a lengthy, leisurely steep. So, steep on, steepsters, steep on!

This herbal concoction is quite unique with its quirky addition of lavender. Coconut and lavender: definitely a different combination for me. Delicate, floral, spicy and sweet were adjectives that came to mind. True story: I woke up with a very bad headache, the kind that just settles in at the base of your skull and makes you dizzy and borderline queasy. I had this herbal infusion and voila, my headache receded and went away completely. Voila: the healing properties of lavender! The end.

True Story: I had such horrible morning sickness and my friend did too. She told me to “get that orange tea at Starbucks” because it was the only thing that made her feel a bit less nauseated. So, I did. I thought it tasted weirdly like, wait for it, warm Tang. Gross, right? But not really? I just loved it. But my taste buds were all weird from the morning (noon and night) sickness, so I’d soon grow to hate it, right? No. I still love this tisane, a decade later. The end.