Travel to India

This was an extra sample from a swap with Barbara78, thank you so much, oh it was a lovely surprise. One I had to try at once.

I was in a total chai phase a couple months ago (cappuccino frother included) which seems to be abating – I decided to brew this western style instead in order to judge better.

And it is a great chai while being very different from my till-now definitive chai (Chandernagor). Like it, it has cloves! I love cloves in chai, it can add an extra dimension to all the other spices. Here it is more subtle. I can detect cinnamon as well, and ginger definitely. As well as vanilla. It is a perfectly balanced tea. Barbara found chocolate-like notes on it, I did not but must brew it again.

I am finding a certain quality to Thé-o-dor´s flavoured black teas, something I am struggling to describe but which I find very enjoyable, a certain on-the-exact edge balance of flavours with tea, nothing ever too strong nor too weak, a certain “just right”. And this is another winner!

Have you ever seen Hell’s Kitchen? There always is an episode in which the candidates have to taste various dishes blindfolded. More often than not de candidates can’t even recognize the most ordinary foods. That’s how I’m feeling now.

I smell the tea and think to myself: I know these smells, but can’t name them. Apart from that, I seem to smell something chocolate-ish, but according to the list of ingredients on the tin it isn’t or shouldn’t be in there…? I’ve browsed the net but can’t find any further specification. If I ever missed the full ingrients list on the website of The O Dor…

It smells sweet and spicey. The sweet will probably be the vanilla, although I don’t really recognize it as such. It melds very nicely with the more spicey spices in there, amongst which clove (and assuming vanilla is officially also a spice?). Perhaps that it is the combination that gives the chocolate-ish feel.

The base consists of a medium bodied black tea which balances nicely with the spices.

All in all a keeper!

Let’s travel to India (on courtesy of Dustin, who sent me among “ordered” teas, 5 tea bag samples, which are going to be great in my collection) when today is a first day of new, and hopefully last semester.

Marketing in transport is a lecture I am taking while writing this note. But the tea indeed delivers me to some warmer environment than this winter wonderland.

Anyway, to describe this tea. It’s somehow sweet (probably vanilla) and mostly thick. Cloves are somehow most prominent flavour, but overall it is mellow, but as well somehow boring in tastes. Like my sender wrote, it is like murmur of those flavours. I would like the spices a bit more pronounced.

Day 2 of the advent contained three teabags of this! It smells rich like liquor and raisins. The steeping suggestions say 90c which is around 198F, lower than I usually steep my black teas, but I tried it anyways. My first cup was on the light side and the second at a higher temp was a little richer, but I think a hotter first steep may be a better way to go. It still had that depth to it, but the flavors on top of that seemed muted. I could taste a chai mix, but it was more of a murmur. Luckily, with Theodor being so generous with their advent servings, I have two more bags to test steeping parameters on!

I now have a whole shelf of tea from this company, and all of it gifts from my kids. My daughter had been ordering it but on a trip to Mexico last week she saw some in a grocery store and brought me two more tins.

Hubby and I had this at breakfast Sunday. It is a pleasant sort of chai, lacking the pepper and heat that I dislike. The ginger and clove are all the heat I require. I drank mine plain, hubby added milk, and I thinking that this would also make an awesome sweet latte for a hot summer afternoon. Clove is the dominant aroma for me but it doesn’t hijack all the taste of the cup as clove can sometimes do.