Portal Tea (formerly Tea Chai Té)

Much, much better as an oat milk latte. Used my new milk frother and made an absolutely wonderful latte, sweetened with honey, and sprinkled with cinnamon.

Day 1 of my advent from Inkling! I audibly gasped when I took my first sip of this tea. It has an incredibly lovely vanilla flavor, that seems to be surprisingly difficult to find. Really enjoyed this at the end of my work day yesterday.

After listening to Jenni King rave about this tea for years (literally!) I finally caved and got my hands on some. And she wasn’t wrong…this is one of the best vanilla teas I’ve ever tried! Not quite as good as Whispering Pines Golden Orchid, but perhaps a close second. The vanilla flavor is rich and natural and compliments the base tea well. It’s delicious straight, but milk takes it to the next level and I’m betting it would make a pretty awesome sweetened tea latte as well, though I haven’t tried that yet. I’m down to the last couple teaspoons of my 2oz tin and will almost certainly be restocking.

I made this a week ago for an early morning staff meeting when my stomach felt awful… my stomach felt awful because, as it turned out, I was getting a migraine. I went home at my lunch break and never had a chance to log the tea. I still had about two more servings left in the (rather generous) sampler Tea Chai Te included of this in my last order with them, so I decided to brew it up again this morning. I’ve been migraining a lot this week, but working through it so my job won’t hate me. Mint is really soothing on the GI migraine symptoms, I’ve found.

This is pretty nice for a mate. I normally don’t like mint teas where I can tell they are heavily flavored with peppermint oil, and the ingredients don’t state this uses oil, but the peppermint is so strong I suspect it is using peppermint oil of some sort. Since I don’t really like the smoky notes in mate and the really strong peppermint flavor from the oil covers those notes up entirely, I’m actually kind of digging this. I’m still getting a bit of a grassy/hay herbaceous note from the tea, but the mint in this has a strong menthol flavor that is cooling, refreshing, sweet, and soothing. The mint hits early in the sip and the mate notes are a more subtle aftertaste. I’m actually really liking this; it isn’t as good as their macademia nut mate, but it is soooooooooo soothing on my stomach with a more interesting flavor then plain peppermint leaf tea. I could probably get behind having more of this, at least to combat morning migraine nausea, since the caffeine in the mate does make it a bit impractical for all-hour usage.

Finishing this off for the May sipdown prompt, “An herbal tea.”

It’s a “sweet cinnamon candy” tea, but I find I really enjoy that flavor on a rooibos base; the mix of honey sweet and mildly woody suits that sweet cinnamon flavor nicely. I have a black tea version of this tea as well, but like this one better; that combo of sweet and warm spiciness just makes for a nice nightcap on these rainy spring evenings.

I’ll have to restock this at some point. Raising my rating from a 75 to 80.

I’m surprised I haven’t reviewed this one yet, since I’ve had it since my Portland birthday trip in March 2017, when I visited Tea Chai Te. It’s their take on the famous Cinnamon Orange tea from Market Spice in Seattle, only on a rooibos base. I normally don’t like that artificial “Red Hot” cinnamon candy flavor used in these sorts of spice teas; they don’t claim to be using any flavoring, but it certainly has that “cinnamon flavoring” taste which makes me think of cinnamon candy or Big Red chewing gum that I don’t associate with teas that are only using cinnamon spice. That said, the rooibos base adds a lot of natural sweetness which helps temper it a lot, so I find it much less cloying and obnoxious than I usually find that flavoring. It’s actually kind of pleasant, reminding me of the sweet, satisfying counter-balance to the strong spicy cinnamon flavoring I get from the one cinnamon candy that I actually like, chocolate-covered cinnamon gummy bears.

The result is a tea that is more mildly spicy than overbearingly hot; the sip has a sweet rooibos and strong cinnamon candy flavor, with a very subtle sweet orange note in the rooibos base. It’s a bit hard to make out beneath the spice, though. A bit of clove is present toward the end of the sip. Mostly, it’s a strong cinnamon rooibos, and it’s the artificial, candied sort of flavor. But it at least isn’t hot, creating pleasant warmth during the sip but not leaving a long spicy lingering unpleasant tingle. It’s a safe choice for spice-weenies like me.

This is probably the best smelling tea from the tea box, so I had to try it! It reminds me of Harney’s hot cinnamon sunset flavor, but with a bit more complexity. The flavor is mostly cinnamon. Sugar makes the flavor pretty pleasant. While it’s tasty, it’s not really special enough to keep around. I think the Harney version is a little bit better, but I don’t even keep that one around anymore since I haven’t gravitated toward spicy teas lately.

23rd day of Sara’s Advent Calendar!

It’s Christmas Eve Eve, and this is a nice spiced tea that reminds me a bit of Hobee’s tea, a blend they serve in their restaurants and also offer in loose leaf. The cinnamon and clove waft off the cup and are the prominent flavors. I can also taste the rooibos and a subtle note of the orange peel. It tastes sweet too. I like it hot, and I’ll bet it would work great as an iced tea too.

It’s already the 20th day of Advent! Thanks again to Sara for the custom calendar!

This one smells like pumpkin in the cup, not just spice! Since this is a chai blend, I brewed it in water and added enough vanilla almond milk to cool it down so I can drink it right away. It’s probably not to most people’s taste, but I like doing it that way.

It’s actually more pumpkin than spice! I can taste a little cinnamon and clove or allspice. I checked the ingredients, and no allspice. So it must be clove. Oh hey, now I found a ginger note at the end of the sip.

I think it would be fine w/o any milk too.

If you like your chai to have a big kick of spices, you might not like this one so much, but I love it. It’s warm and soothing.

I received an early Christmas gift in the mail yesterday: the black tea gift set from Tea Chai Te! I’ve been wanting to try their “Mount Hood Vanilla” blend for ages and I’m so excited to finally own it, along with several others. This is the one tea in the gift set that I wasn’t quite sure about and sadly it isn’t for me. The description is accurate…this is like drinking melted red hots! Way too much cinnamon for me. I’m sure there’s someone out there who loves cinnamon and will adore this tea, so I’ll be popping it in the Discovery TTB for someone else to enjoy. :)

The smell is very vanilla! Like the vanilla coffee is sometimes scented with.

Hmm, I feel like I’m tasting the vanilla and then the mate, but not together. Or something grassy. There’s a very slight note of macadamia, but I wish it had a little more of that.

It’s not bad, but after smelling it, I’m a bit disappointed by the taste.

Edit: Okay, I tried it again cold, and I like it much better! I moved it up from 65 to 81. I also now taste a coffee note.

Phew, I have finally worked through sipping down a lot of the teas I’ve been working on over the last few days, so now I’ve moved a new set of alphabet letters over into my focus area. I pulled this one for my Ode to Tea V entry! I reviewed it before, two years ago (here: https://steepster.com/mastressalita/posts/383379 ) but figured it had been long enough to give it a proper revisit.

I absolutely love the smell of this stuff. If you separate the herbaceous quality of the mate base beneath, the scent does remind me of a warm Macademia Nut sugar cookie. Has a very sweet vanilla aroma, with a somewhat nutty quality. On the sip… I can tell age has not done this tea any favors. I remember the flavor being a lot richer than I’m getting now. The mate is coming forth a bit more strongly, with that herbaceous hot hay note, and a hint of smokiness; not nearly as smoky as I have had yerba mate get in the past. The tea is still quite sweet, with some vanilla and nuts. I noted before it tasted like coffee to me, but I’m not really getting that now; perhaps one of those sweet and nutty coffee creamers, but not actual coffee beans.

I’m not going to slide my rating down though, as I remember this tea being an absolute standout in an area that isn’t well represented (flavored yerba mate) and think my neglect hasn’t done the flavorings any favors. All the more reason why it’s good I grabbed this one to sip down! Would do far more good to get rid of this less-than-steller tea and replace it with a fresh, tastier batch.

Autumn Harvest! Going nutty again today, though this is my only macademia nut tea (honestly, I don’t think I’ve even seen any other macademia nut teas!) and it’s on a rather unique base — yerba mate (another rarity, as yerba mate blends in general are rather rare). The smell is interesting to me, because I’ve had plain yerba mate and it tasted just like gunpowder green tea to me — vegetal and like tobacco smoke — but this smells just like a nutty coffee with a bit of vanilla creamer from the dry leaf. It’s soooooo appealing! I usually only get roasted mate because I don’t care for that tobacco smoky taste, but this doesn’t even have a hint of that from the aroma.

Steeped up the tea is lightly golden, and the tea tastes very similar to the aroma. It isn’t a strong coffee flavor by any means (nothing like roasted barley) but I’m getting it. It’s a bit vegetal too, a bit like dry hay, but I’m not getting that smoky tobacco taste that turned me off so much from plain, unroasted mate before. The flavoring of vanilla and macademia nut oils is wonderful! It’s not overwhelming, but it really does seem to bring out that sweet, nutty coffee feel, and it’s so natural, too. The nut is very forward on the sip, and the vanilla just adds a sweetness that sort of lingers at the end, and the two flavors compliment each other well.

This is probably the best unroasted yerba mate I’ve ever had. Will definitely be keeping this one around!

I had this in my water bottle today, prepared as a cold brew, about five teaspoons to a quart and left to steep overnight. I have to say, this is a really nice fruit tea; I normally love tart/tangy hibi-hip teas, but this tea is much sweeter than a lot of fruit teas I’ve tried, with strawberry being the dominant flavor note I’m getting. In fact, the first thing that came to my mind was sweet, strawberry jam. I also get some slightly more tangy red berry notes, which settle toward the back of the tongue toward the end of the sip, but overall it’s just a very naturally sweet, juicy, jammy tea. It’s very refreshing!

I’m migraine sick and since the nausea is doing a number on my appetite, I didn’t feel like much more than a bit of white rice for dinner. But then I got the weird idea that maybe I could “spruce up” my Minute Rice a bit if I used tea for the water that the rice sucks up to give it some flavor, and figured, what better to try this experiment than the Sticky Rice Pu-erh I have yet to try?

So I brewed up a cup of the pu-ehr, strained it, brought it back to a boil so it would be warm enough for the rice, added the Minute Rice, covered it and let it do its thing. My kitchen smelled heavily of the nuo mi xiang herb, and that actually did improve my appetite slightly. The rice was a nice tea color after it had sucked up the tea liquor, and it was pretty good, too; still tasted mostly like white rice, but I was definitely getting a sticky rice herb flavor in the after taste that made it quite nice. I think next time I’ll try adding a little salt to the tea broth before adding the rice, too.

I also resteeped my pu-erh leaves, since the little mini tuo looked like it still had a lot more to give and I was curious to try the tea as a tea as well. The cup had a slightly earthy mineral/metallic scent to it, as well as nuo mi xiang herb aroma. No hints of fishiness. The pu-erh itself was quite sharp at the beginning of the sip, with a very mineral-tasting lead, with this sort of warm, brothy finish of the nuo mi xiang herb that closes out the finish and lingers on the tongue afterwards. Later in the cup, I was getting a very subtle camphor flavor. I wasn’t sure how much I’d like it as a tea and bought it originally just to try as a rice flavor/ramen broth, but this actually is a really nice tasting cuppa. A little odd on the tongue at first, but the finish is so satisfying and relaxing.

June Wedding! Time for something old! As soon as I got back from my trip out this weekend, I needed to restock my fridge with iced teas, so I cold-brewed this tea which came from my March 2017 trip to Tea Chai Te.

I definitely don’t really like it when fruity green teas are so overpowered with fruit flavorings that you can’t even taste the base tea anymore; this tea certainly doesn’t have that problem. The base tea actually is the dominant flavor here, and it is a very pleasant sencha, having a very fresh, spring-like grassy flavor. I honestly don’t think this particular tea has any natural or artificial fruit flavorings in it; if it does, they are extremely mild, because the strawberry flavor in this tea is actually quite muted. The tea has some dried strawberries in it, so it does have a natural sweetness to it that you wouldn’t normally find in a sencha, and there is a sweet berry note toward the end of the sip, but it is rather subtle. Calling it a strawberry sencha is almost a bit of a stretch, since it just doesn’t have that overwhelming strawberry flavor you’d find in a flavored tea. It is a softer, sweeter green tea, and as far as an iced tea, I found it very thirst quenching… so it did have some nice qualities. But the fruitiness was a bit too subtle here. I don’t like my fruit greens so overpowered I can no longer taste the base green, but I wanted a touch of strawberry here… just a bit more of a happy medium between the base and blended flavor. This came off more as a pure sencha with fruit as an added natural sweetener to me, rather than actually having any fruit flavor. It is certainly a nice sencha, though!

June Wedding! For this “something blue” offering I’m revisting one of my older Tea Chai Te teas, Blueberry Rooibos, which I actually first sampled in their shop during a birthday vacation to Portland in March of 2017. I brought an ounce of it home with me, and have brewed up a warm cuppa for this rainy evening.

The leaf smells more heavily of the rooibos base than many flavored rooibos in my collection, but there is a somewhat tangy berry overtone to it. It actually comes off a little cough syrupy in aroma, and I don’t typically get that with rooibos… the last time I did, that was also a fruit flavored rooibos, so I wonder if it’s something about the addition of fruit notes with rooibos that brings that particular association to my mind?

Brewed up, it is deep red and smells more of rooibos and not much of blueberries, though there is a sort of general dark berry fruitiness to the aroma. The flavor, too, strikes me as stronger on rooibos than fruit flavor, which is more subtle; I get that sort of honeyed sweetness, a slight mellow orange note, a little brisk woodiness, and then toward the end of the sip is a slightly sweet, slightly tart berry flavor. It doesn’t strike me particularly as blueberry, though. But it is pleasant. And I do find that a nice, warm, strong cup of the tea (I do need to be a little more heavy handed on the leaf) produces a nice flavor and doesn’t come out with that medicinal cough syrup flavor that I was worried about. The leaf certainly smelled like it in the bag, though!

It’s a relaxing cuppa. I find it nice with a touch of local honey, too; gives it an almost floral sweetness and makes the berry note pop a touch!

This tea smelled like acetone as it was steeping, so I was fairly certain that I wouldn’t enjoy it. Thankfully, I had no intention of drinking it hot. As an iced tea, the blend was a very interesting combination of floral, fruity and citrus notes. If I’d have been given this in a blind taste, I would’ve never pinpointed the flavor as lychee. To be fair, I’ve never eaten a lychee. I’ve only ever had lychee-flavored things – boba tea, candy/jelly, tea, etc. That said, it was a very pleasant blend with nicely balanced flavor. I’ll be saving a bit of my sample bag to make some boba tea. Again, it hasn’t been one of my favorites during this week of sampling Tea Chai Té blends, but it makes a nice iced tea.

I started my day with this blend – hot and straight. It’s pleasant but not something I’d repurchase. There’s something happening with the aftertaste that doesn’t sit well on my taste buds. It’s definitely a dessert tea. The base is nice, and there’s decent caramel flavor. I’m not getting much in the way of creme brûlée. It’s smooth and rich, but it’s not as decadent as I was expecting given the name. It’d probably make a nice latte.

I had this blend over ice this morning, but I imagine it’d be lovely hot as well (particularly in fall). The pear flavor was really fresh and ripe. It didn’t taste cloying or candied. The pomegranate added just a bit of tartness and sharpness. In fact, the blend reminded me of a more subdued, natural version of Cranberry Pear (one of my top ten faves from DT). Again, the smooth black tea base was hanging back and playing a supporting role.

If I didn’t have a ton of Cranberry Pear to sipdown, I’d be tempted to add this to my next order.

The flavored black tea blends from Tea Chai Te continue to impress.

I’m continuing to work my way through my Tea Chai Te samples…

Of the teas I’ve encountered that combine strawberry and lemon, I’d say about 95% of them are fruit infusions. I was very pleasantly surprised to see a black tea that featured the pairing. I had this blend (over ice) this afternoon, and I was really quite pleased with the flavor payoff. The flavors of the strawberry and lemon were both present, and they complemented each other very nicely. What’s more, the black tea base was smooth and mellow which really allowed the juicy, fruity notes to shine.

If you’re looking for a tasty iced tea blend that adds a bit of oomph to your standard citrus black tea, I’d recommend.

This tea combines my love of so many things – smooth black teas, vanilla, and stone fruits. Iced, this blend is so refreshing and juicy, and the vanilla just adds a bit of interest at the tail end of each sip. Hot, the vanilla is more amplified and the blend is giving me homemade peach jam/butter or peach cobbler vibes. The black tea base reminds me of those in so many of the blends I love from 52Teas – smooth, silky, strong but not astringent, complements the other flavors in the blend (as opposed to competing with them). It’s a delicious blend, and I’m so pleased that it tastes as good as it sounded when I bit the bullet and placed my order of samples. I received a very generous 1-ounce sample, but I’m burning through it quite quickly. I will be reordering it to add to my collection once I finish trying all my (11!) samples.

This is a delicious blend. I’ve iced it a few times. Each time it reminds me of freshly picked strawberries. The flavor is very jam-like to my taste buds. Truthfully, it makes me feel quite nostalgic. My grandparents used to grow strawberries in the backyard, and, as a child, I’d help my grandmother make homemade strawberry jam every summer. The hibiscus adds lovely color and a bit of tartness that complements the strawberry flavor. The orange and tangerine aren’t overpowering. They add just a kiss of citrus flavor that, again, recalls memories of jam making with grams and the addition of fresh lemon juice to complement the sweetness of the strawberries. Strawberry teas don’t rank very highly on the list of teas I have to have in my cupboard. However, this is a lovely blend with true strawberry flavor that would be an excellent addition to a summer iced tea rotation. It’d make awesome Arnold Palmers too.