Tea Type:
Black Tea/White Tea Blend, Chai
Where to Buy:
Uniq Teas
Product Description:
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution
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Tasters Review:
If you are a regular reader of ours here at Sororitea Sisters you are aware that Uniq Teas allowed the 3 of us here to blend our own tea and this is mine in the series of 3!
The Tri Pi Chai was the one I blended thru their wonderful service!
You can find this blend here
http://www.uniqteas.com/products/sororiteas-tri-pi-chai#ixzz2DRbhkaPT
It’s made up of:
70% White Chai / 15% Caramelicious / 15% Raspberry
I wanted to do a Chai but not a ‘regular’ chai. I’ve always been intrigued by WHITE Chai’s – I can’t really explain why but I like them and like the tinker with them. This was the very first thought I had when I saw that as an option on their site!
But I also wanted both WHITE and BLACK Teas in them. I didn’t want the black tea to over power the white, tho. BUT…I did want to taste both. Most of the other attempts I have tried with the black and white combined you can’t taste the white…so…fingers crossed!
I also wanted this to be just a little sweet and a tad fruity so that is why I went with a little bit of the caramel and raspberry combo-ed offerings!
I wanted to try infusing this a 1 minute or under FIRST so that is what I did.
Here were my findings:
First…the DRY leaf aroma – right from the tin – smells like white tea, gentle spices, raspberries, citrus, a pinch of sugary and I am chalking that up to the caramel, as well as a little woodsy. It has some interesting yin and yang or masculine and feminine type aromas to it. I like how the opposites seem to attract in this!
This blend – at 1 minute or under – infuses to a medium brown color with a neat copper glow.
To the nose – the liquor smells warming, comforting, mellower, and slightly fruity, floral, and woodsy…all at the same time! WOW! How different…but that is what I was HOPING for!!!
Now the taste…
“Oh…WOW!” were the first two words that came out of my mouth! WHITE TEA! YAY! But there was MORE to it!
It has a nice white tea flavor up front that is mellower but still pushing thru and noticeable. The Chai Spices are subtle and I am ok with that! I didn’t want them to over power! The white tea also provides an interesting floral flavor working with the spices or maybe just a tad more than the spices. The Caramel is also hiding out in the background and does contribute an oh-so-small-hint of sweetness to possibly tone down the floral flavor. More importantly – I think the Caramel assists with the texture and gives it a nice creaminess to the middle of the sip. However, as it continues to cool at room temperature I can taste the caramel more and I like it! I also think the black tea working with the caramel works well, here, again, I didn’t want it to overpower the white and I really don’t think it did. YAY! Also as it cools the Raspberry started to come out to play more and it’s really welcoming and fun! It’s just enough to make you say “What’s that? Fruit!?” So, yeah, I guess I just really wanted this to be complex…but I wanted it to be interesting and diverse, but jive in it’s own certain way. Just like a Sorority I guess. So far…I think this reached those things.
I named this Tri Pi Chai for a few reasons! One being…The SororiTEA Sisters are made up of 3 Tea Lovin’ Sista’s…Liberteas, Azzrian, and myself. We are all different but we all love tea and we all work well together. I also named this Tri Pi Chai to do a little Play on Words to work hand-in-hand with SororiTEA Sisters. Also because I used 3 different offerings Uniq Teas offered.
The more I drink this the more I like it and as it cools the flavors dance around and become more youthful and seem to morph at different temperatures!
I will experiment with this at different temperatures but I am really liking it with a shorter infusion time, so far.
Special THANKS to Uniq Teas for this awesomely-fun opportunity!
Sweet & Sassy SororiTea From Uniq Teas
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Uniq Teas
Tea Description:
Sweet caramel notes are accented with a touch of spice and hint of almond. This is LiberTEAS blend.
Learn more about creating your own blend here.
You can order this blend here.
Taster’s Review:
Not too long ago, we (the SororiTea Sisters) were contacted by Uniq Teas and invited to each create our own blend which we could then sample and review. Well, of course we took them up on it! It sounded like fun!
And it really is fun! The Uniq Teas website is so easy to use! You just create an account, then choose from their selection of 40 different Organic and Fair Trade teas to create a blend. You choose the teas, and you choose how much of each blend is used to come up with your own unique blend. Then, you name the tea, design the label, and you write the description. You even decide if you want the tea to be a public tea (available for everyone to purchase) or a private one.
It was a blast to put this blend together. It is a blend of black teas: Caramelicious, Black Chai, and Almond. I then chose the name Sweet & Sassy SororiTea because caramel and almond is sweet, and I thought that the spices would add a certain sassy attitude to the cup without coming off as being too spicy.
And I’m really happy with this! The black tea offers a strong background of flavor – it is rich, assertive and slightly astringent. I’m not experiencing any bitterness, but, I also think that this is a tea that you don’t want to over-infuse, because I think it could become bitter if it’s left to brew too long. I steeped this for 3 1/2 minutes and it came out just right.
And even though the black tea base is strong, it doesn’t overwhelm the flavors which I find to have just the balance I was looking for. The caramel comes through as the strongest flavor, and there are hints of almond in the background. The spices are loud and indeed sassy, but they aren’t overly spicy. It was my intention that even though a chai blend was being used as part of my tea blend, I didn’t really want it to come off as a chai. I wanted it to come off as a spiced caramel blend with a touch of almonds, and that’s just what I got! This blend is great served straight … but I like it even better as a latte as it helps to bring out the creamy notes of the caramel and the sweetness of the almonds.
I am definitely going to be returning to Uniq Teas in the future to create another blend … maybe a twist on Earl Grey next time!
