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My mailbox smells like chai tea. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s kind of nice. I’m not sure my neighbors appreciate the spicy smell of their mail though.

I got the sample packet from JustOrganicTea today! They send along 11 different tea samples and a sample of organic sugar. The chai smell really overwhelmed the other teas though, ALL the little baggies smell like chai. I don’t know if the taste of the other teas have been contaminated, but since this is a flavored tea as well, I figured it wouldn’t be too bad if it was contaminated just a little. Plus this is one flavor that I actually requested.

The leaves are broken, rather small, the largest maybe a square centimeter. There’s no dust though. The leaves are a dark brown like 60% dark chocolate. The label says there’s carob in the mix, which is interesting, I’m not sure what carob tastes like on it’s own. I couldn’t get much of a dry leaf smell off of this sample. I’m not sure if that’s because the sample is too small, or because the outside of the bag still smells like chai.

The liquor is a dark maple type of color, maybe not as red. The dark maple that’s a little more brown and green. It just smells like black tea. It smells like very nice black tea, but I’m not getting a vanilla scent off of it. The blend of black is very nice- it’s very smooth and mellow and not at all astringent. For me it’s like where lipton is too bold, and P&G tips are too smooth, this is a nice medium. It’s a black blend that I actually like very much. One I wouldn’t mind serving to friends with cake. It’s smooth and sweet on the uptake as well as the after-swallow taste. There’s no dryness to it, just sweetness.

I get a teensy bit of vanilla on the gulp. The slightest bit of a vanilla feel in the nose, but no actual aroma or taste. At this point I don’t know if it’s actually there or if I’m just looking so hard for it that I’m imagining it. If I weren’t told it was a vanilla blend, I wouldn’t have called it that. Maybe I should start doing tasting notes without looking first at what I’m brewing.

I like it. I would drink it if it were offered to me. I really liked this cup, unfortunately the sample didn’t contain enough for several cups. I wonder if that’s a good thing. On one hand I can’t really get addicted to a tea I’ve only had once. On the other, I can’t experiment to see if this is really one of those jewels. At this point though, I don’t know if I like it enough to commit to a large amount of it.