Chanakara Collection: Chakra #7 White Lotus

2 bags for 450mL water, bare.

I don’t drink chamomile very often, and I do, it’s for the medicinal, calming effect, not for taste. But I do enjoy this blend of really decent chammile and linden flowers. It’s all very fresh, even for a bagged tisane, and the scent reminds me of apples, hay, grass, and summer sun. It definitely helped ease me off to dreamland last night. One of the better cham-based tisanes out there. Needs a good long steep to taste of anything.

So I found a couple of boxes of Chanakara Collection tea bags at my mom’s when I was going through some things. They were still wrapped in cellophane so I figured that they were probably still semi-fresh even though they’re a year or more old. There was a time in my tea past when I ordered several things from Stash’s website, and a box of these teas was one of them. I liked them so much that I ended up ordering a six-pack of boxes on Amazon, so that’s where these came from. I felt like having a nice chamomile blend this evening while watching Brave with my mom and boyfriend, so I opened one of the boxes and selected this tea. There don’t seem to be instructions anywhere on the box, so I just did boiling water for 5 minutes. I could definitely steep this one longer if I wanted a stronger flavor.

Overall, I find this to be a perfectly nice and pleasant chamomile-based tisane. I’m not really familiar with lotus or chrysanthemum flowers, so I couldn’t tell you what they add to this, and I found that the linden blossom tea I tried tasted quite similar to chamomile. So overall, this is mostly a chamomile tisane with a little bit of extra. There’s definitely a honey note, and something that reminds me of sweet pastries.

I was pleasantly surprised by this tisane, and I could definitely see myself keeping it around as a nighttime treat.

This tea really reminded me of shampoo or soap or something. It must be something about the lotus taste, which is more floral than chamomile, that caused the association for me. People who like light, floral teas might want to give it a try, but I think I prefer straight chamomile.

I’m usually not a fan of chamomile (I don’t particularly like the taste), but this is pleasant enough that I can drink it and not find the chamomile element overpowering. Slightly sweet, grassy, and sharp all at once.