Dragonwater Chai Green Tea Review
Chai tea is a very rich and somewhat complex drink that has been enjoyed and savored for centuries in many parts of the world, particularly India. Chai actually means “tea”, nothing more complicated than that, but in western culture today the word has come to be associated with a particular form of the drink – that is to say, black tea that has been brewed to have a very strong flavor, with a combination of flavorful spices, sugar, and added milk. From one chai tea recipe to another, the spices used will often vary, but traditionally it's made using cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, ginger and pepper. Chai tea is intended to be enjoyed as a hot, sweet beverage, with the sweetness of the sugar being an important characteristic in order to bring out the flavors of the spices.
Green tea, on the other hand, is tea that has undergone minimal treatment or alteration from its original state as young leaves on a plant! It is drunk much more regularly than black tea in places like Japan and China, and its popularity has spread to western countries in recent years, particularly because of the wide range of health benefits that regular consumption of green tea is known to provide. It has a very distinctive, vegetal flavor, sometimes described as grassy, and can be very pleasantly refreshing if brewed correctly – attention to the finer details is necessary when preparing delicate green tea, as it's very easy to oversteep the leaves or use water that is too hot, both of which result in bitter-tasting tea.
It's quite uncommon to discover a chai tea that isn't a black tea, but is in fact a green tea – but the Dragonwater Tea Company has produced just such a tea. Its Chai Green Tea contains “all natural flavors”, including cinamon, cloves, almond pieces, rose petals... oh, and green tea. It's nowhere near as strong as a regular chai tea made from black tea – in fact, the flavor is actually quite subdued, not bursting with spicy flavors as you might expect from a chai.
That's not to say that it's a weak or bland tea. The aroma, for a start, is heavenly for spice fans. A gorgeous mix of spicy flavors hits you as soon as you open the bag – cinnamon, rose, deliciously sweet vanilla... and the infusion, too, has a beautiful, comforting spicy aroma.
The taste, however, is much more subtle, and quite unlike a traditional spicy chai tea. Nor does it have the overpowering grassiness of pure green tea. Instead, it combines the gentles and mildest of flavors from each to create a unique and highly enjoyable blend with a light taste and a short-lived but pleasant aftertaste. It makes a really interesting switch from pure green tea if you want a break from that vegetal flavor without losing out on all the health benefits of green tea. The flavor is recognizable as green tea, and yet contains notes of vanilla and spice, and even a subtle floral overtone from the rose. A nice change, and an enjoyable variation of both green tea and chai tea.
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