Black Chai

Queued post, written August 20th 2014

This one came from the Fru P Christmas calendar that I had. It’s the last one of those teas that I haven’t had yet, and we used the rest of the leaf today. The weather has gone from heat wave-y to downright autumnal over the last few weeks, so it was appropriate.

I’ve shared some of it with MissB earlier and she was very pleased with it, so that stopped me being too scared of it. I like chai now and then, but it’s never something I would seek out and it’s extremely rare that I want to drink any. I don’t find it unpleasant. It’s just not very me. Maybe scared was an inaccurate word to use. Perhaps it would be better to say that MissB’s enjoying it made me less disinterested.

It is indeed a well balanced cup. I can easily pick up spices but none of them stand out in particular. It’s more of an ensemble performance, everything blending in neatly.

It’s quite sweet, and I’m getting a sort of impression that there might be a little bit of licorice root in there. Not very much, though. Not enough to get that tell-tale licorice root feeling at the back of the throat, but just enough to make it sweet.

It was quite nice.

Two more teas to go before I’ve emptied the box!!!

Well. I say ‘emptied’. Two more teas to go before I can start in on what I added to the box the other day because I was a Bad Dog. We had Husband’s Sister visiting for a long weekend, and took her into Skanderborg because she wanted to buy a souvenir and we wanted to buy some more plates and Husband didn’t want to drive in Århus when Skanderborg was closer and had the same sort of shops. While there, Husband suggested that we pop round to that chocolate shop we found last time we were in Skanderborg. They have NUTE tea. You may recall I wrote about one of those some months ago. Came in a very attractive but hopelessly useless wooden caddy.

“I’m not yet allowed to buy anything,” says I.

“Come on, you’re on holiday,” says Husband.

SEE?! Not my fault!

Came out with two NUTE caddies and another tin and six NUTE sample satchets. It all went a bit wrong. Especially since I went into a sort of feeding frenzy state where I didn’t realise until much later that two of the sample satchets were the same tea I also bought a caddy of.

“I can’t tempt you with some of our handmade chocolates?” says Shop Lady.

“It doesn’t exist!!!” says I, somewhat desperately.

Yes. It all went a bit wrong.

The problem with exchanging tea with Steepsterites from exotic (to me!) locales like Denmark is that you get amazing teas that you must have more of, yet will need to rely on that person to get them to you – and vice versa. Because OH MY GOODNESS this is a lovely chai.

Smooth and rich, with all of the requisite spices present yet none taking center stage. It’s sweet and creamy too, even without any milk or cream, and mild yet wonderfully satisfying.

Yes Angrboda, I may need to make arrangements with you to get more of this. :) Thank you so much for all of the wonderful and local-to-you teas that you sent!