Maharaja Chai Oolong

Oh I love chai blends. I also love Oolongs! So what could be better than the two of them blended together into something delicious? I went to World Market yesterday and used some coupons to get my first cast iron tea pot! I also sprung the extra 10 bucks for the trivet and warmer. While I know I should probably use a tried and true tea to test the differences between my ‘Perfect Tea Maker’ and my new cast iron, I just was dying to taste my newest teavana acquisition, Maharaja Chai.

The scent of the tea leaves is spicy and pungent. I can pick out the cloves, cardamon and pepper. The color is a beautiful and deep brown with a golden tint and the first sip just bursts on the back of my mouth. After the warm swallow, I can taste the sweetness of the cloves. Its smooth on the tongue and sweet without adding any sugar or sweetners. I usually don’t sweeten oolongs because the leaves just add such a delicate flavor that added sweetness can mask, but I can tell this one is going to be a favorite.

It reminds me a little of Sweet Oolong Revolution, but the spices are way stronger, giving it that lovely chai flavor. I am very pleased with this one.

Love the spices here. It’s a naturally sweetened chai, so there’s no need for sugar. I usually add just a little more than suggested, just to get a bit of a stronger flavor. It stands perfectly well on its own, but blends very nicely with Honeybush Vanilla if you feel like a little extra sweetness :) This is the tea that I want for a yixing cup!! Good any time of the day, and very nice after lunch right now in the summer. So far my favorite from Teavana.

This is my favorite tea so far. I discovered it after trying the blend in a Teavana store. I purchased the Samurai Chai Mate and this one seperately to mix myself. I discovered that I like this one better on its own. It smells very spicy, with a strong cinnamon smell. It brews to a nice color & tastes like it smells. Strong notes of cinnamon & cardamom, and the warmth of ginger. It is a strong cinnamon flavor, which can be offputting to some, but I like it. I like my chais on the strong side, and this delivers nicely. Adding some sugar rounds out the flavor.

While running an errand today I walked past a Teavana that I had no idea existed. I managed to do my errand and then somehow found myself backtracking to Teavana. I tried to resist, as I’ve never been in one before, mainly because I know that you have to buy 50g min, and I prefer to try smaller amts of new teas.

I walked in anyway. I’ve been having good success with oolongs lately, so I gravitated to those. After checking out some of them, I ended up getting 50g of this one, as I was seduced by smell of the potent spices. It wasn’t until I was halfway home that I looked in the bag and thought, “Wait a second, where’s the oolong?” All I could see were spices.

I brewed up a cup, and did see a few broken leaves in the pot (6 to be exact). Not very impressive as an oolong, but I gave it a sip. OMG is this sweet. The cinnamon is strong and overpowers everything else. It’s almost sickly sweet. Now I understand why the SA suggested mixing it with a black tea. At the time, I wondered why, as it was already a tea mix. Now I understand. You need something to cut the sweetness.

I may experiment adding some other spices/herbs to this to balance out the flavours, or add some plain oolong to it. Otherwise it’ll just be an expensive bag of spices sitting in my cupboard forever.

The smell of this Chai tea is very good. The cinnamon seems to be the strongest out of all the spices in the tea. Taste wise, I would have to say the cinnamon kind of overpowers all the other flavors. It tastes good, as I love cinnamon, but I think it’s just a bit too much for an even flavor of all the spices.

So this is pretty good. But the oolong is not recognizable. Really pointless to waste oolong on this as you cannot taste it at all; it just tastes like chai. Now don’t get me wrong, it is good (even though the cinnamon overpowers everything else), it is tasty. I prefer it plain (no milk or sugar — it is already pretty sweet).

Had I known Teavana has a minimum amount that you have to purchase, I wouldn’t have bought this. Luckily my mom loves this tea, because I don’t think I could finish it all. Oh and I had asked for the minimum amount (50 g) and the employee put 64g in the bag. He then asked me if that was okay. What was I supposed to do, ask him to put 14g back? This is just another reason why I prefer DT to Teavana.

Holy moly! If you love cinnamon, and I mean really LOVE, then this tea if for you. I, however, don’t even really enjoy Big Red gum. If you want a wake-up call with each sip, you’ll really love this tea. I found the cinnamon pretty overpowering and decided to give it to someone that was constantly eating hot tamales. It has a smooth, pure flavor though.

This was the first tea I ever sampled at Teavana and I loved it at first sip. I am a tea newbie but have tried a few Chais and this one blows the others I’ve tried away. I enjoy it with a spoon of the rock sugar from Teavana and get two decent steeps from my Perfect Teamaker. Love that little gadget btw.

Needless to say, I left with a tin of this delicious aromatic goodness the first time I ever set foot in Teavana. I am sure this will be a staple and after reading some other reviews I think I’ll buy some Samurai Chai to blend it with but honestly, it’s great just as it is.

Very cinnamon oriented oolong tea. It’s difficult to perceive the tea’s flavor as the cinnamon and ginger have a really strong flavor. It’s really nice in my opinion. If you like cinnamon you will love this. Not one of my best though because I tend to like more softer blends were you can actually enjoy and perceive more the actual tea flavor instead of the herb involved.

This tea is amazing when you mix it with the samurai chai mate. The combination of those two teas are amazing. Seperate, I really don’t like them to much because it tastes pretty watery. But together is a burst of cinnamon and other flavors. I always add about a half a teaspoon on sugar per 8oz. That way I have my sweetness, but it doesn’t overwhelm the flavor of the tea.