Portal Tea (formerly Tea Chai Té)

This oolong had such a bizarre taste! I had to brew it a few times to figure it out, but I couldn’t. Wishing I could explain this tea, I am unable to as I haven’t had anything like it. Fantastic dark oolong, but for an oolong it does have this slight bitterness on the aftertaste within the mouth feel. Not sure is all Gaba oolongs are the same, but if they are then it is something to try for sure as it might be someones favorite.

Tea Chai Te didn’t have a decent description of this one on its website, so I honestly wasn’t sure exactly what to expect. But since I’ve only had roasted TGYs before so I decided to pick up an oz just to try it out. There also weren’t any brewing instructions so I winged it and did my usual green oolong brew of 1tsp of tea in 7oz for 2 minutes in 190º water.

It tastes like rich raw honey dipped in water. Maybe a little bit of a green taste at the back of the sip, but mostly just rich rich honey. Not at all like I was expecting. I thought the Yue Guang Bai cake from Puerhshop tasted like honey, but this blows that one out of the water. If you gave this to a non tea-drinker I’m positive they wouldn’t believe you hadn’t added the honey yourself.

Tea Cha Te doesn’t get that much press on here, but I’ve been very happy with them. They ship quickly, I think their prices are fair, and I’ve enjoyed all of the teas I received from them. In this past order I picked up an oz of three different tea, but all weighed closer to 50g which was a very nice surprise. I definitely recommend checking them out.

There weren’t many instructions on the package for this tea, just steep for 3 minutes. No note of amount or water temp, so I made my best guess and used 1 tsp in 7oz with ~185º water.

It turned out pretty well, even though I thought it would be a bit light. This tastes very similar to DTH’s Organic Yunnan black tea, with that deep savory caramel note. It has a light mouthfeel, but the flavor is quite rich. There’s a little bit of fruitiness, but it’s mostly caramel. Not at all what I was expecting, but I really enjoy it.

An unusual oolong that reminded me of buttered popcorn in taste and especially in smell (in a good way). It has a creamy flavor to it – a pleasant departure from the expected. I rated it a 75 in that I enjoyed it but I don’t know anything about its quality or origin. I might update my rating after I learn more. I recommend this tea to adventurous palates but not those expecting a traditional oolong flavor.

Another rose tea disappointment. The dry tea had a promising, fresh flowery scent—not too loud, but perceptible and pleasant. I steeped it for 2 minutes as suggested. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a trace of rose or anything else, for that matter, in the brewed tea. It would be nice as a basic black tea as it is fairly mild and not astringent, but that’s not what I was hoping for in a tea called Rose Petal. (The tea does contain petals and looks pretty.) Oh, well, moving on…

I am trying Vanilla Rose Chai today. The aroma is just heavenly in the bag! The tea looks beautiful, too, with its bright rose petals. The company suggests brewing it for 6 minutes. Because it is black tea, I prefer to brew it for 3-4 minutes, but I decided to experiment and brewed it twice: once for 3.5 minutes and once for 5. It didn’t affect much the aroma or the flavor of the steeped tea, but brewing it for 5 times made it stronger for me.

I’ve been looking for a good, prominent rose scent in a tea cup. While the scent of the vanilla and rose is quite prominent when the tea is dry, in the cup itself, the vanilla is very subtle. I could smell it, but tasting it was a different matter. The rose, unfortunately, didn’t make an appearance for me in the brewed tea. So, basically, I taste the black tea leaves, with some subtle vanilla. There is a slight citrus aftertaste.

I wanted to love this tea: it smells beautiful, and what could be better than vanilla and rose? It is also organic! However, I am looking for a bolder taste (not just smell) of the vanilla, and I certainly want to feel the rose not only when it’s dry. If someone is looking for an organic black tea with a subtle vanilla scent, this would be a good option. I’ll keep looking…

Mmmm. The vanilla taste comes through pretty strong, but doesn’t overpower the black tea. It’s super vanilla-y but not too creamy. I think I would enjoy drinking this in the winter because something about the aftertaste makes me think of a gentle snowfall.

Brews up a nice dark amber. Smells strongly of vanilla in the bag, and brews into a nice calm vanilla blanketing a lovely black tea. Simple but very nice.

Ashmanra’s sipdown challenge – December 2023 Tea #7 -A wellness tea
One of my OLDEST teas remaining, from probably my first Steepster swap, and fits for this prompt.  It’s a healthy rooibos chai and it’s gone now.  More licorice than I remember, but a LOT of this blend made it into the mug to finish it…
2023 sipdowns:  103

Ashmanra’s sipdown challenge – December 2023 Tea #8 -A flavored black tea
I will log this here, as it was an unlabeled little sample from years ago.  Mostly in Chinese but only says “China tea” in English.  So a Chinese tea is all I knew to expect!  Opening it, it was loose and it looked like golden monkey, so I was thrilled!  But upon steeping it… surprise!  It’s flavored with rose.  Not bad, but not exactly the best.  I wouldn’t have minded a plain golden monkey… the leaves looked great and delicious on their own!  But at least it fits for this prompt. 
2023 sipdowns:  104

thanks TeaEqualsBliss for sending this in a trade a while back. On the site searching for steeping notes, I noticed it mentioned that this was a 1st Place Winner in Oregon’s First State Tea Competition – Sept. 2, 2011. Nice! This seemed to me more of a chai than anything medicinal! The tea looks better than in this picture. There are many colors in the blend! The steep color is a bright orange. The taste is a pretty solid chai… the type not mixed with black tea which is nice sometimes. I like the addition of the licorice… it adds something special! (Even though the tea I had yesterday also had licorice.) Nice and spicy!

This is one of the samples from my box from LiberTEAS, and also one of the only teas I specifically requested. Rose and chai are two of my favorite things, so it was a winner before I even tried it! She was nice enough to send me the last she had of this blend, enough for 3 or even 4 cups (not counting re-steeps). That sample box was probably the best tea-related things I’ve ever purchased—it’s been about a month since I got it and I’ve been trying to taste one of the samples every 2 days or so, but so far I have only actually run out of ONE kind! Okay, sorry this is sounding like a paid advertizement, I just get a little giddy whenever I look at how much stuff from it I have left to taste/finish~

Anyway, the tea. I love floral teas, creamy teas, and chai: all of those elements are very prevalent here. It’s floral, but not overpoweringly so, and I’ve always found rose to be the “sweetest” floral scent so it adds a nice balance to the spices. The chai part is warming, not too spicy but it has a great mouth-feel. There’s not a ton of ginger and I don’t think any pepper, which is what usually gives you that “heat”. This blend has more aromatic spices—cardamom, cinnamon, clove, maybe a little allspice? They work SO well with the rose. Then there’s that creaminess from the vanilla, perfectly balancing the spice/floral so nothing is overpowering and everything is in harmony. This is one of the best chais I’ve tasted and is most definitely going on my shopping list!

Oh yum! YUM!!! This is the third tea that I picked up at Tea Chai Te, and I think this is a newer blend because it isn’t even on their website.

It is amazingly good – the spices are warm (not spicy hot). I taste the cardamom and the cinnamon primarily, and the vanilla is quite strong too. It is smooth and creamy, giving this cup a very luxurious kind of taste. The touch of rose is a delicate note, but it does much to add to the luxurious taste. Exotic, sweet, and absolutely irresistible – it is difficult to put the cup down long enough to type!

I needed a caffeine fix this morning and this one did the job for me. Delicious. I love the macadamia nut flavor here, it melds so nicely with the vanilla. So good.

YUM! This is one of the three different teas/tisanes that I purchased when I visited Tea Chai Té a couple of weeks ago. I don’t usually order yerba maté, so I thought I’d step outside of my comfort zone a little and try something I wouldn’t normally purchase, and when I saw Vanilla Macadamia Nut … well, that’s all I needed, really!

There are really too few macadamia nut flavored teas/tisanes out there. Tasting this makes me wonder why. This is really incredible. The vanilla tones are smooth and creamy and sweet, and the taste of the macadamia nut sort of sneaks up on you, starting as a rather subtle flavor and developing with each sip. By mid-cup, it’s delicious macadamia nuttiness!

On Tuesday afternoon, my husband took me out to lunch in the Sellwood neighborhood in Portland, and right around the corner was Tea Chai Te, and after lunch he was good enough to bring me there to grab a cup of iced tea (and some loose leaf to go). This is the tea I ordered iced, but I also got an ounce of it to bring with me, and I brewed some of that tonight. I have to admit that I prefer the tea that I brewed myself over the tea that they served to me, I suspect that they didn’t make the tea strong enough when they added ice to it, making for a weak iced tea. This is MUCH better … lots of delicious, juicy strawberry flavor and sweet, buttery Sencha.

So yummy!

I absolutely love this tea. The ceylon is pronounced and the vanilla really comes through. It needs nothing, no milk or sugar. A beautiful blend!

Delicious! It’s been a while since I’ve had this Oolong. It is a milk Oolong, and I just learned that in last year’s Oregon Tea competition it won 1st place. Cool.

A lovely milky/fresh cream taste with just a hint of buttermilk to it. The floral tones in the background are very lovely, and they emerge more with subsequent infusions (I’m on my third and fourth infusion now).

I like this one a lot.

This is good, but it’s more like a spiced hot chocolate than a chai. Very chocolate-y and not overly spicy, I’d recommend this for when you’re in the mood for a hot chocolate, rather than tea. This looks like hot chocolate powder with whole spices – I did not see any tea leaves at all in the bit that I used.

I saved this tisane for a time like this – trying to avoid getting sick like the rest of my house seems to be! This is a very soothing blend. Much tastier than I thought it would be. The cardamom and cloves come through very nicely, the rooibos are not a strong component but do lend a little bit of woody/nutty taste to the cup. The licorice is also quite strong. This tastes a bit more like a spice melangé than a medicinal/functional tea to me, and that’s a good thing! It does have a medicinal quality to it that sort of sits in the background, but it isn’t an unpleasant taste. Not a bad way to take my medicine!

Their menu said it was actually a 5-year-aged pu-erh, but no matter. I had a li’l tea date this evening, and decided to give this a go. I’ve had sheng tuo cha elsewhere and ended up liking it quite a bit. This one wasn’t quite as excellent as the others I’ve tried – lacking some of the wine-y/grape-y note – but it more than made up for that with an earthy/floral presence. I would gladly select it again.

This is my second time having this. And it was just as excellent the second time around as the first. Granted, they probably over-steeped it a little bit, but that’s the great thing about a damn good black – it takes a punishment with poise.

This was my tea of choice for a clandestine meet-up with a fellow tea blogger – An International Tea Moment. You can read about that here: http://lazyliteratus.teatra.de/2012/10/10/meeting-a-tea-moment/

Er…if you wish.