Well. I bought this chai thinking I would be trying something new, but then I looked in my cupboard on Steepster and there it was. Then I looked in my physical cupboard and couldn’t find it. Eventually I found an empty bag tucked in the corner, so I guess I must have liked it before, and I like it this time around too.
Of all the masala chais I have right now, I think this one is my favourite. It’s heavy on the fennel, cardamom and coriander, and it’s a bit peppery, which are some of my favourite notes for this type of tea. The dry leaf smells strong, complex and spicy, and while I think I catch a hint of cinnamon, it’s not a dominant fragrance or flavour.
This one is also very pretty. In amongst the CTC tea fannings there’s a lot of orange peel, fennel seed, coriander seed and broken green cardamom pods. A little sparser is cinnamon bark pieces, whole clove, broken star anise and ginger. I don’t actually see any peppercorns, but they’re definitely there in the flavour.
I drank this with milk and quite a lot of sugar. I steeped it for 7 minutes, at which point it was quite strong and definitely had some bitterness and astringency which needed mellowing out. I used more sugar than I usually do to soften the bitterness, but it didn’t end up overly sweet tasting.
Yum!
Flavors: Anise, Astringent, Bitter, Cardamom, Cinnamon, Coriander, Fennel, Pepper, Spicy
