Velvety Vanilla Chai - Limited Edition

This is the second of the Twinings chai latte blends I’ve tried this week, and the second that contains only black tea and “flavourings” – this time vanilla spice and syrup flavourings. And that’s my problem with these blends – chai is surely easy enough to put together from actual spices, and there are clearly none in these bags. Why resort to chemicals? There’s no need.

I used 1 bag for my cup, and gave it 4 minutes in 1/2 cup of boiling water, topped up with hot milk. I like this one better than the Bollywood Chai, for some reason, but it’s a close thing. Both have a weird, artificial quality that’s just plain odd, but the vanilla in this one pips it for me. At least I can taste vanilla and identify it as such, even if it is a bit on the fake side. It reminds me of coffee syrup vanilla, rather than vanilla pods, but it’s sweet and warming, and it’s cold out, so I’m not particularly hard to please this morning.

I wouldn’t buy these again, though. Any of them. There are far, far better chai blends out there. Ones that are actually properly blended from spices and accordingly taste that much nicer. This just seems kinda lazy to me, and I expected better.

Hmm.

Ok, so I impulse-bought this on the way into the office because the only thing I’m keeping permanently deskside at the moment is a pair of oolongs, and neither go with milk, and sometimes you just want something milky, and it was Monday morning, and I was weak.

I’m sure I should have checked the ingredients before buying, because I sure as heck don’t see any chunks of spices in this, as I’d expect in a chai – whole cloves, bits of cinnamon bark, ginger pieces, cardamom seeds, whatever – and the ingredients list reads “black tea, vanilla, spice, and syrup flavourings (26%).” Huh. Syrup flavouring?

Bananas. Oh my god, what’s with the bananas. This is the second time I’ve had something that calls itself a chai that my brain just tastes as lightly spicy bananas. Like, straight out of the bag I get this REALLY strong whiff of bananas. It smells like the tupperware of banana oat muffins I ate my way through last week. There is no mention of banana on the ingredients list. Why am I getting banana?

There’s a coffee shop in the city centre that does gorgeous coffee and lovely loose-leaf teas from a local company I’m normally fond of (indeed, their Bombay Chai has added bay leaf and tastes like it’s got whole spices in it) but I suspect this might well be what the cafe uses for their vanilla chai latte, because the banana-ness is identical.

Because it tastes like it’s supposed to be a banana tea when I drink it too, either that or somebody stuck a banana in the tea leaves and let it ripen. I’ve done it as per the package directions, hot and very milky, and it’s a bit sweet and creamy and there’s some spicy warmth, but not really any specific spices I can pick out. Maybe the syrup flavouring is uncannily like banana? I have no clue, but as a banana tea goes I’d probably still go for Bluebird’s Monkey Chops or Banana Bake from T2. And I wasn’t looking for a banana tea today, I was looking for a chai, so this is disappointing on all counts. It’s drinkable inasmuch as it’s sweet and milky and not wholly offensive, but man, it’s otherwise just kind of weird.

Twinings, no.

Had this briefly last night before the murder mystery; first thought was, “Yuck. Why did I pick this up in London again?” Maybe because I could, maybe because I thought I wanted to share.. dunno. Compared to the Adagio chai just prior, this was actually quite disgusting. I’m tacking it up to the “syrup flavorings”.