Portal Tea (formerly Tea Chai Té)

June Sipdown Prompt – a peachy tea

Another from Youngest – many thanks!

I actually had this yesterday morning rather early. Either Ashman nor myself slept much Saturday night due to revenge bedtime procrastination. My brother had called and asked to meet for breakfast near the interstate as he and his wife travel to Charleston for a little vacation. We are so accustomed to eating at home – early – that I made a pot of tea and took some biscotti to the backyard for a pre-breakfast warm up.

This is just made for being a breakfast tea. Everyone knows what I mean when I say it has that classic tea flavor that hangs in there after you swallow it? We drank it plain but it would be great with milk and sugar, however it doesn’t need it.

Having it hot and plain, the vanilla is the first aroma that translates to taste for me. There is peach and apricot but nowhere near the high-note punch of Harney Apricot or their Midsummer’s Peach, which you smell from a distance. (I love all of them. No judgment, they are just different.) The fruit flavors here are toward the darker, baked side rather than candy-like. Liked it well enough to have again today for breakfast as it just seemed like what my brain was in the mood for.

I bet it would make an awesome sweet iced tea and I have enough to give that a try. Will update soon.

Strong Berry taste; slightly tangy – acidic, but in a good way.
Not much “classic” tea flavor here – definitely an herbal and not a blend.
I got this as a tiny 2 cup sampler, so it must be available as of Dec 2023.

A Very light black tea, not harsh at all, some carmelly flavors, actually very nice.

A nice Thai-spicy tea, some cinnamon and cardamom, not sharp.

A Nice black tea with smooth vanilla taste, but not overpowering.

This one is nice but I think I still prefer the vanilla rose chai from them to this one. This one reminds me a bit of a tea from Stash with vanilla and spices.

Oops, I apparently never reviewed this tea before! Now I’m doing a sipdown, cold-brewed. It’s licorice-forward, and I love how the other flavors come together to support it. I loved it hot-steeped and love it as a cold brew too. I’m glad to see Portal Tea still makes it! I remember hearing they changed their name from Tea Chai Te, wonder how long ago that was.

Excellent tea, would buy again!

There’s a lot that I like about this tea. The flavors are all ones I enjoy and make for a chai-like taste. There are spices, cinnamon, and some notes of citrus. Overall, this could have been an amazing tea, but sadly I just wasn’t a fan of the overwhelming sweetness that seemed to completely overpower everything else in this tea. Was the blend dipped in sugar prior to packaging? It sure tastes like it. I’m not big on sweet tea to begin with, but this honestly tasted as though I’d dropped several tablespoons of sugar into the water. Definitely feels like a missed opportunity.

I pulled this out the other day when I was having some bad digestive trouble, since a ginger/pu-erh combo seemed good for that. I like ginger, but I’m also a bit spice sensitive, and the level of ginger in this blend was waaaaaaaaaaay too strong for me. The ginger burned the whole way down, I couldn’t even taste the pu’erh. I dumped a bunch of honey into the cup and it still was too strong for me.

I’ve managed to finish off the package by making liter pitchers of iced tea, using about half the amount of leaf that I would normally use for that amount of brew, a few ample teaspoons of honey, and adding carbonation to give it more of a fizzy ginger soda feel.

The ginger here is just too strong for me and I won’t be getting this again. But I do think the strong ginger and pu’erh is a good choice for digestive troubles for those that can handle the heat of lots of ginger.

Advent Tea!
I didn’t steep it long enough for the first steep and it came out rather weak. The second steep for about 10 minutes is mostly clove and cardamom with a lingering vanilla aftertaste. Not the chai for me, but thanks for sending it, Lexie.

Advent tea!
This one is nicely creamy vanilla with a base that isn’t bitter or astringent. A nice addition to the holiday season to remind me of baking and vanilla flavored cookies. Thanks for sending it Lexie!

Advent Tea!
This is very smooth and slightly berry flavored. A nice easy drinking cuppa that seems to be mostly gone already. Maybe there’s a sage or mint note at the end? Interesting enough that I might need this one in my cupboard.

Advent tea!
I’m not a big peach fan, but I do like apricot, and I’m glad that apricot has a distinct flavor here. The vanilla didn’t show up in either steep, and there was a medicinal aftertaste in the first steep. I’m glad I went for steep #2 because it was much better, no lingering aftertaste and a much smoother finish. With the peach in there it’s never going to be a favorite but I’m glad Lexie sent some for me to try!

I find myself missing Portal Tea’s old name (Tea Chai Te). The packaging on this tea still has its old name. I’m trying to use up the samples of a bunch of their teas I have. This was a nice chai. I like that you can taste the rose but it’s not an overly floral chai either. The vanilla helps balance the rose. I’m a big fan of rose and this was nice to sip on while studying.

I can’t believe I haven’t left a review for this yet… I originally bought this tea on a vacation to Portland in 2019 to help combat the really nasty taste of a nasal spray medication that would drip down my throat with the strong cinnamon candy flavor. I stopped taking that medication, and then the package sort of sat at the back of my cupboard until I realized how old it is now…

I really love this tea. I’m not sure if there is a lot that differentiates it from the thousand other “Red Hot cinnamon candy” tasting teas out there, but it is at least on a nice full leaf black base. I actually like their Rooibos version even more than this one (because I think the sweet cinnamon flavor accompanies the rooibos well and is something I crave after caffeine-cut-off time), but this is a solid morning tea and one I like equally as much hot and cold.

I will definitely have to restock this and the rooibos version at some point!

I ordered a cup of this tea to go at Tea Chai Te the other day and I should have bought an ounce of it to take home. I didn’t try the tea until I’d already left though unfortunately. The tea was a bit astringent towards the end of the cup but initially, it had a lovely juicy candy pear flavor. It was quite sweet on it’s own and reminded me a tad of the Stash pear tea bags I’ve bought before. I prefer this one over the stash as the base tea is smoother and the candied pear flavor brighter. I bet this tea would be great iced as well.

Pulled out this 2018 blend for the January prompt item “a spicy tea”.

The description of this tea says it is a yerba mate/black tea blend, but I honestly don’t see any black tea leaf in the mix? Just lots of roasted mate and spices. So I brewed a heaping teaspoon in 185F 350ml water for about a 4 minute steep (roughly how I handle yerba mate).

The tea has a rich roasted mate body, with some notes of hot hay, wood, and nuts. Mostly what I’m getting from the spices is a very forward cinnamon flavor… not sweet desserty cinnamon, or red hot candy cinnamon, but that very barky/woody/sweet cinnamon. It is really adding to that roasted woodiness of the tea. There is a light, warming-but-not-burny ginger flavor at the end of the sip that leaves a pleasant warmth on the throat afterwards. There is a little bit of pepperiness to the flavor as well.

It’s a pleasantly warm chai… spiced, but not spicy, with a strong cinnamon presense. The roasted mate is very smooth here. It’s a nice tea for the blechiness that is Pacific Northwest winter.

Happy New Year’s Eve! Today the prompt is to drink your oldest tea!

While this isn’t my oldest tea (those are all pu’erhs that I continually put off drinking for several reasons: a) I feel they “need” gong fu preparation to shine, which I never have the time to do, b) since they age, I don’t feel an incentive to finish them off for “freshness” purposes, and c) frankly, historically that tea type is my least favorite). I’m pretty busy today (work half the day, then I need to cram in errands the second half and hope the blizzard we are having lightens by then) so I don’t think I’ll be able to fit in any gong fu today… so I made this as my take-to-work thermos tea. It is at least one of my oldest 2018 teas, which have been what I’ve primarily been working on sipping down lately.

Tea Chai Te has a couple blends that incorporate tea leaf and spices into Guittard powdered chocolate; the result is something that, at least visually, appears to look more like a hot chocolate mix, just with chunky bits in it. I really enjoy their “Rainforest Chai,” another of their Guittard chocolate blends, so I decided to prepare this tea the same way I make that one: one large perfect spoon scoop of the tea/chocolate powder dumped into the milk frother, a cup of milk, and the frother on “warm”. When it is done warming/frothing the milk, I pour through a strainer to filter out the tea and spices. I find this incorporates the chocolate powder the best, while trying to steep with water in a strainer just turns into a big mess.

Smells, unsurprisingly, like spiced hot chocolate. It’s a rich, sweet, thick chocolate (thanks to the cocoa powder), but I can taste the spices too: notably a warming of clove and ginger at the end of the sip. Mid-sip I get more of a cardamom flavor. The spices aren’t strong enough to cause any unpleasant mouth-burny sensations, but are present enough to be tasted through the chocolate.

I can’t, however, taste anything that would remind me of yerba mate. Flavor-wise, this pretty much tastes just like their “Rainforest Chai,” which is just spices in cocoa powder. I suppose though, even though I can’t taste it, is that the yerba mate has basically turned this into an energizing, caffeinated hot cocoa, while “Rainforest Chai” is a pleasant evening herbal. I’ll have to see how my energy levels feel as I sip on this throughout another cold and snowy morning.

Edit: Having tried this tea a few times now, I have found my preferred preparation is stove top preparation with a 50/50 milk to water ratio and a tablespoon of the tea/chocolate powder. This is the best marriage of rich and creamy hot chocolate notes while still tasting the distint flavor of yerba mate with sweet spices.

Has a strong artificial caramel flavor. If you dig caramel syrup flavor (like the Torani liquid kind they use at espresso stands) you would love this tea.
It is an okay early morning tea flavor wise and has an adequate amount of caffeine in it. I will drink what I purchased eventually but is highly unlikely I will repurchase.