Tea Forte Advent Calendar: Day 18 - Bombay Chai

 


FINALLY!  A break from all those herbals!


And to top it off - a chai!  My favorite!  Of course... a good chai is FABULOUS, but a bad chai is.... beyond heartbreaking.


Ok... warming spices... the write up sounds promising...


Ohhh... good dark color.... and I can smell the spices in the aroma.... this bodes well!

First sip is mainly the taste of the black tea with a bit of cardamom and ginger on the end note.  The ginger, as usual, builds with each sip and made its way to the mid note on the second sip.  The cardamom stayed on the end note but the star anise and pepper showed up to the party in the end note as well.  Sip three had the ginger on the top note, the cardamom, star anise, and cinnamon dominating the mid note with the pepper and clove starting in the mid note and carrying into the end note.  The aftertaste was mostly on the back of the tongue and was weak tannin, pepper and ginger with clove hints traveling up the back of the throat to the nose.

The spices weren't strong enough for me to consider the tea "spicy", but it was a nice basic chai with a low tanin level - which, I admit, makes it a nice option for a low effort every day chai.  I added just a TOUCH of cream to add some slight richness and then dove into the little shortbread heart I had for the day.


As expected, the chai went beautifully with the shortbread.  The butter in the cookie latched on to the dash of cream I had added and made the whole thing feel richer and creamier - highlighting the butter in the shortbread.  The heart, sadly, was too small to last through the entire mug of tea.... so I had to pull out the big guns.

Which is to say, I made the choice to pair the rest of the mug with the fresh Romanian chocolate Christmas cake we had been gifted with that morning.



OH. MY. GOD.  Yes.  This chai pairs SO WELL with cake.  Especially deliciously moist cake like this one was.  The spices might not be strong on their own on the palate, but they cut through the sweetness of the cake in a way that the sugar from the cake isn't able to build up on the palate.  Alternating a bite of cake with a sip of tea in an endless cake made me regret not making a bigger mug of tea so that I could have a second slice to prolong the delicious cycle.


Final thoughts:  Lovely.

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