Chai Caramel Latte

I really like this tea. The tea bag smells amazing. Nice buttery caramel flavor with chai spices I like it even better as a latte with almond milk and maple sugar. The maple sugar really brings out the other flavors. I would buy again but I have a lot of herbal and decaf teas to sip down first.

The dry leaf aroma of this sachet was so familiar to me and it took me a long time to place why as it was steeping, but after taking a couple small sips I realized it was reminding me a lot of DT’s discontinued White Chocolate Chai/Jingle Bell Chai blend.

The two have fairly similar spices; the ginger, cinnamon, and cardamom all stick out a lot and something about the way the ginger and more citrus-y notes of the of cardamom combine reads as very cola-like in flavour. I think the overarching sweetness of the blend, which isn’t particularly caramel but is definitely present, doesn’t do anything to dissuade the comparison to coke for me either. It makes sense though because, at its core, coca cola is a sweet spiced citrus beverage.

It’s… kind of weird to taste in a Chai though…

I made my mug of this earlier in the week while at the office, alongside about two other mugs of tea that I was drinking in tandem with this one. At first, I thought this was my least favourite of the three cups – but it’s the one I wound up finishing the fastest and I did find myself gravitating more towards it than the other two so I think that definitely says something about the tea that I may not have consciously been able to attribute to it.

Sipdown! (25 | 428)

So this one smelled really nice when I opened the wrapper.

The taste isn’t quite as good as the smell, which has a nice buttery caramel scent to it. I’m not getting much caramel in the flavor, mostly just a decent chai on a honeybush base. It has a nice balance of cinnamon, cardamom, clove, and ginger. It even smells a bit caramel-y, and I do taste a hint of a desserty note, but it doesn’t say caramel to me.

So really it’s just a nice herbal chai. Not something I would buy, given the price.

This is chai like for sure. I get the cinnamon cardamom flavors pretty clearly. The caramel part comes across as a richness in both scent and flavor, supporting the chai which is the main player. I drank most of this cup without sugar and liked it, but decided to add some to the last third of my cup and I don’t think it adds anything good to it. There is a sourness in the finish and something distracting in the sip with sugar. I can’t really pick out the honeybush. If the price point were lower I’d buy more of this to add another option to my limited non caffeinated options.