Holiday Tea-son! This is the tea in my advent calendar today, an herbal so I’m fixing it up as my night brew. I really didn’t care for the last rooibos chai I had from B&B, Gingerbread Chai, which I have decided to gift to a friend because I just have too large of a bag to ever sip down when I just don’t like it enough; I found that tea to have a strong “holiday candle” sort of aroma, and while this tea doesn’t have the same aroma as Gingerbread Chai, it is still reading very much as one of those “holiday candle” sort of scents.
Hopefully this spice blend will just be more to my liking… my main issue with Gingerbread Chai is I could tell they had used some sort of flavoring in the rooibos that I am certain they also use in their Birthday Cake rooibos, and I have formed a stomach aversion specifically to that Birthday Cake Rooibos blend because I got hit with a nasty case of food poisoning on my birthday last year, and that was the last thing I’d had before the sickness hit (note it was my burger that caused the food poisoning, certainly not the tea, but that just happens to be what my stomach has attached the aversion to…) Whenever I taste that particular flavoring, I feel queasy. So if that flavoring isn’t in this chai (and if it isn’t so ginger-heavy, and the aroma smells much more cinnamon forward) hopefully it’ll be more up my ally.
The aroma smells quite sweet, still very cinnamony, and I still can’t stop thinking of spice candles! I definitely like the flavor of this one better than Gingerbread Chai… it is spicy and produces a nice warmth, but I don’t find that it is lingering in my mouth in an unpleasant way. There is a slight heat at the back of the throat, but it settles down rather quickly, and I taste a better blend of the spices rather than just a really potent ginger kick like I was getting with the other tea. The cinnamon seems to be the most forward spice, though I get a lot of clove notes as well, with the ginger/cardamom leaving a spicier note at the end of the sip. The base of the tea definitely doesn’t have that vanilla/cherry tasting flavoring that came out so strongly once I’d added milk to Gingerbread Chai and immediately set off my stomach aversion; the base of this tea is hard for me to describe… it really makes me think of those poinsettia spiced candles, if you could imagine that without any soapy context to the flavor. It’s not exactly reading as floral in taste, though, more fruity, perhaps like dried tart berries, in the most subtle of ways… and it’s a bit roasty/nutty?
I actually really like this one! I’d say this might be my favorite tea from the calendar after Christmas Cake, even though I fail entirely trying to properly describe it.
Flavors: Berries, Cinnamon, Clove, Nutty, Roasted, Spices, Spicy
