Tea Reviews | It's All About The Leaf

Posts Tagged ‘Cardamom’

I love the look of the leaves! The leaves are a nice dark green, long stems and mixed in are big chunks of spices. The smell of the leaves dry left me a bit disappointed as all I could smell was an unrealistic cinnamon flavoring. I love ground cinnamon, but this was more like cinnamon red hot candies.

The wet leaves carried over the red hot candied scent, and left the liquor a light yellow green. The first few sips are very lightly spicy. I taste the cinnamon candy flavor first, followed by a bit of cardamom. I think I may have brewed this too light. I used 2 tsp for 16oz water. I think I will double it next time and do 2 tsp for 8oz water (as I think that’s what I have left of the sample). I don’t care for this blend. I’m not a fan of cinnamon flavoring, I prefer ground cinnamon or cinnamon sticks to this flavor. I won’t pour it out, and wouldn’t refuse it if it were my only choice for tea, but there are plenty more teas I enjoy much more than this one.

You can purchase the Bengal Green Chai directly from the Adagio website.

Sweet treat time!  Opening a Coco Truffle pyramid, can tell why it was recommended to me just by the smell.  Yum in a bag! Almost smells like a chai. It is a pure herbal blend, naturally caffeine-free, beautiful as a dessert tea.

Steeped it in boiling water for five minutes and the smell of all the spices are coming through, the cardamom scent is a bit strong though.  Tastes good but a bit weak.  Steeped it for three more minutes and the blend has balanced out.  It’s brewed a beautiful dark steep.  Truffle magic, here I come. Can taste and smell the cacao goodness now, like an exotic candy bar in a cup, this is really delicious.  This is the very best, zero calorie indulgence I’ve had in awhile.  I don’t crave sweets very often but I will be reaching for this one the next time I have a chocolate crisis!

You can purchase Tea Forte Coco Truffle Tea directly from their website, and in various high-end establishments around the world.

Okay, clean slate, trying the second of my Kalahari teas, Cherry Vanilla. As soon as I opened the package, the scent wafted out. The dry leaves smell almost like of those chocolate covered maraschino cherry candy bars that I can never remember the name of. Wanted to open the bag but, again, it was too dusty looking so I just dropped it into my teacup and steeped it.

It brewed up a nice, dark red color, very nice amber like you’d expect with a Rooibos. The scent is really spicy, completely overrides the initial cherry scent that I got from it. It actually smells delicious, like a caffeine free chai. I love spicy teas and am actually happy to have lost the cherry scent. First sip gave me a burst of cinnamon at the back of my tongue, a little bit powerful but that’s okay, it’s really good (did I mention that I like spiced teas?). I let it cool just slightly and the flavors from all the other spices came out almost one at a time. It’s a really good balance of spices, none are really overpowering the others now. Except for the auspicious licorice trying to sneak to the front.

I really like this blend and I tried to steep it again but it failed. Thinking the recommended steeping time for this one should be longer, closer to seven minutes.

There are ten different ingredients listed on the package. Nine great ones and one that I would love to see dropped – I don’t ‘get’ the cherry part of the blend, seems unnecessary and it’s listed as a ‘flavor’. The issue I have with unknown ingredients may seem petty but I really need to know what I’m consuming to be able to feel confident with the product. Nice blend but not good enough for a place on my shelf.

You can purchase the Cherry Vanilla directly from the Kalahari Tea website.

I love genmaicha so when I saw this blend from TeaFrog I knew that I had to try it. I didn’t really know what to expect in terms of flavor but I was imagining some type of genmaicha/chai/tropical hybrid.

In the scent of the dry tea, the fruity sweetness is the most noticeable. The typical toasted genmaicha scent is hard to identify, but there is a lot going on in this tea. As it is brewing, the genmaicha scent begins to become more noticeable.

I’ve tried this tea for several different steeping lengths and I love it at 3 minutes. The finished tea has the typical yellow/green aroma that is typical of green teas and has a strong toasted scent with a slightly sweet undertone. This tea is amazing. Slightly sweet, toasted, buttery. This is the Kettle Corn of teas.

Bamboo Shoots is extremely smooth, tasty, and doesn’t need any additions. I think this one is a very original play on the traditional genmaicha and is something all genmaicha lovers should try at least once.

You can purchase the Bamboo Shoots directly from the TeaFrog website.

The dry leaf smells like cinnamon and star anise, though predominately of star anise. Through the bag I could distinguish long black tea leaves mixed with small bits of what appeared to be the ginger and cloves. I’ve never had a tea with star anise, but apparently it is a licorice type flavor, so here goes.

I brewed this tea using 6 oz. of almost boiling water for 4 minutes as suggested on the package. Taken plain, the tea tastes unsurprisingly like black tea flavored with licorice. If you like licorice, then you will like this but I’m not a licorice fan. I added milk and sugar to make it more chai-like which seemed to even out the licorice slightly. The cinnamon was also more noticeable but I could not distinguish any of the other chai spices that were included in this blend.

Overall, this is a decent tea for licorice fans who like black tea but is not my idea of a chai since the majority of the chai spices aren’t present in the taste.

You can purchase the Bombay Chai directly from the Mighty Leaf Tea website.