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There’s a noticeable tannic note when I drink this tea plain, so I think I prefer it with a bit of milk even though it clashes with the mint a bit and the tea doesn’t really have the strong spice flavour I’m used to associating with chais.

It turns out that this tea stands up nicely to having milk added as well without losing any of its rose flavour. This is a still a girly tea. ;)

This goes really nicely with those Adagio Tea cookies, I’ve discovered. Together they make for a wonderful, caffeine-free (well mostly) dessert.

These cookies have a surprisingly spicy kick to them, rich with the flavours of cloves, cardamom, and ginger just to name a few – very chai-like. The addition of the candied pineapple was a nice surprise it gives the cookies a little pop of sweetness to balance out the spices. I think out of the three kinds of tea cookies these ones are my favorite.

I liked the smell of this tea, it’s sweet and fruity and reminds me of blueberry pie or cobbler. Sadly the sweetness is mostly confined to the smell and right as I take my first sip I can pick out the tart hibiscus. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not as horribly sour as some blends (I’m looking at you Stash’s fruit teas) but it’s still kind of unecessary as blueberry isn’t normally a tart fruit to begin with. There is some actual blueberry flavour there too, thankfully, but I’m not really feeling the sage and mixed with the tartness of the hibiscus it gives the tea a bit of an acrid, unpleasent flavour.

Sorry, this one isn’t a winner.

These cookies are more crumbly than the rooibos ones – I keep having to brush crumbs off my keyboard as I type this, lol. These cookies taste more like sugar cookies (though not quite as sweet) rather than shortbread, and the bits of dried cherries baked in are a nice touch too (I looooove cherries). I’m not getting anything that really says ‘white tea’ to my tastebuds though. Personally I think white tea is too mild to be used in something like this – maybe they should have used one of the bolder green teas instead(?)

Hmm, this is nice but not as creamy as some of the other cream earl grey’s I’ve tried – the now defunct SpecialTeas for instance. It’s a smooth, light tea and the vanilla-cream takes the edge of the bergamot, but it’s striking me as rather ordinary and unremarkable.

My order from Adagio came in and it may well be my last order from that company because they’ve jacked up their international shipping prices to ridiculous levels. I am glad I finally got to try the fabled tea cookies though; I couldn’t resist buying a bag of each kind so I’ll be reviewing them all here.

The honey rooibos cookies have a fragrant vanilla smell that makes my mouth water. Their taste reminds me a lot of the British shortbred cookies my grandmother used to serve with tea, with the added flavours of richly sweet honey and a hint of of citrus. The flavours of the rooibos don’t make themselves known too much, which is fine by me, as anyone who knows me knows I’m not a big fan of red rooibos. But the little bits of rooibos leaves that were baked into cookies were a bit annoying as they kept getting caught in my teeth.

Not much to say about this tea yet, I found it to be quite a mild green tea, with some faint grassy notes and a hint of sweetness as the tea cools off.

The first thing I noticed was that the leaves are in very small pieces. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t expecting a whole leaf tea or anything, but with the pieces so small you get more of the tannins leeching into the tea and a very strong black tea flavour. Which wouldn’t be as big an issue if the spices were stronger, but apart from the mint they’re pretty tame and get overwhelmed by the rest of the tea. Mind you, the mint was a nice addition, it wasn’t too strong, just a hint that lingers on the tongue.

Taken as a whole though, I’d only consider this chai to be okay rather than great. They’ve got a good thing going with the mint, but they need to work on the rest of the tea.