Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Golden Tips
Tea Description:
Originating from India, Masala Chai or ‘Spiced Tea’ is one of the most popular black tea blends in the world. This ancient traditional recipe is prepared by blending a strong & robust black tea with an array of fresh & aromatic spices. Our signature ‘Masala Chai Spiced Tea’ is symbolic of the original house blend which has been cherished in India for decades now. A combination of Assam CTC & orthodox leaves blended in a varying ratio is taken as the base. The base tea is then blended with exotic and fresh indian spices including crushed cardamom, cinnamon, black pepper, long pepper, dry ginger and clove.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
I’m always so excited to try a new chai – one that I’ve not yet tried. So, I was happy to find this India’s Original Masala Chai from Golden Tips in my stash of teas waiting for review!
The dry leaf is a very fine CTC. Even the spices are pretty finely chopped or ground, so it would benefit your teacup to give the pouch a good shake before you open it and measure it out.
To brew it, I measured out one bamboo scoop of the tea and then I shook off just a little bit from the scoop. Since the chop is so fine, you don’t need a whole scoop of tea! Then I put the tea into the basket of my Kati tumbler and added 12 ounces of boiling water and let it steep for 2 1/2 minutes. Again, since this is a finely chopped tea, you don’t want to steep it too long. 2 1/2 minutes produced a very flavorful cuppa for me – I wouldn’t recommend steeping it much longer than that otherwise you may wind up with a bitter tasting tea.
This is really good! The spices are ‘moderately spiced’ – that is to say that it’s not super spicy, but not what I’d call mild either. I think that if you typically shy away from a chai because it’s too spicy for you, you might find that this chai is to your liking. It’s warmly spiced without going overboard.
And I like that the spices are really nicely balanced. I taste cinnamon, clove, cardamom, ginger and pepper, but I don’t notice that any one or two of these trying to overpower the rest. It’s warm and zesty, like a delicious spice cake. All the spices are present and accounted for but they don’t overwhelm the cup or the flavor of the black tea.
And the black tea is the star of this cup. That doesn’t happen too often in a chai. Now, don’t get me wrong, I LOVE a good, spicy chai! But I also like other ‘chai’ blends that offer a balance of flavors like this one has achieved.
This tea offers a robust, full-flavored taste of black tea. The tea is an Assam tea so I get a strong malty character that I like. It’s rich and smooth. Not too astringent and not bitter (although I suspect it could be bitter if I had oversteeped it!)
And this tea offers a pleasant flavor of spices that tingle on the palate. The flavor of the spices builds, but it builds in a really pleasant way. I haven’t felt like “oh, that’s spicy!” Instead, it’s more like … nice! Warm! Zesty! Yum!
A really nice chai!
