I swear I’m awake… really I am. That cloudy 6 degree Celsius (that’s 42F for those of you in the US) 15 minute walk to public transport in order get to work in should be enough to wake anyone up in late September. And yet here I am at work and I can barely keep my eyes open; so time for some tea!
Hmm…. Pumpkin Chai, how I love thee. Seriously, this is one of my all-time favorite flavored teas, and one of the first that I ever tried from David’s Tea. That said, until today I had only tried one of the earlier versions and with some of the recent comments that I’ve been about this tea, specifically about how DT has changed it up a bit, I’m not certain if it will remain one of my top picks, so I guess I’ll have to just try it out
Dry this tea has a very sweet, strong pumpkin and spice aroma to it. It always reminds me of when my mother would bake pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving (which is now only a few short weeks away… where has the summer gone!!) The sweet scent carries a definite caramel flavor to it with just hints of bright citrus to keep it from being too heavy.
Brewing tip: leave lots of room for this tea to expand; the tea leaves are rolled fairly tightly and can quickly take up quite a bit of space once they start to steep. The liquor comes out as a rich red-brown, and there are some particulates from the spices floating in which makes it a bit murky. And the smell… very nice mix of spice, pumpkin and tea though not as strong as I’m used to it being.
As for the taste… The black tea serves quite nicely as a great base for this tea, it really gives a lovely earthiness to the flavor and provides a wonderful warm and somewhat rich mouth-feel. And the pumpkin is quite predominant as well with just enough sweetness to balance that flavor out. But the spice… I have to agree with some of the more recent comments, it’s not the same. The pumpkin chai I remember had a lot more spice to it, don’t get me wrong the spice is still there but just not enough to call it a true “chai” tea. Maybe it’s just the spoonful that I had but ya… I’m actually rather disappointed.
Well… it’s still a great tea but I can’t give it the rating I would have previously. That lack of spice in the flavor profile makes it a bit unbalanced in my opinion. Maybe when I have it again I’ll actually get the full spice flavor that I was missing, otherwise I might just have to add my own spice to help get it back to the wonderful tea that it was.
