Zhena's Gypsy Tea Fire Light Chai

Zhena's Gypsy Tea has a rooibos chai this time. And this makes perfect sense to me, rooibos is caffeine free and chai has two settings in my opinion, on a cold winter day or a at the end of a long one to relax. Now regular tea chai has a little caffeine due to the tea leaves, so this might be a better choice! But my job is to tell you how it tastes, not the health benefits and how it fits in your day.

I expected to detect cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger as soon as I opened the tin but once steeped the rooibos set this apart from other chai. Not in the smell but the flavor, the nuttiness of rooibos played a great part with the other spices. The cinnamon wasn't overpowering like other chai and overall this had a great composure. As I had guessed, Zhena's website said there was some orange peel in this too. It's hard to sense because it works with the sweet, but I believe it still makes a difference.

This one will be in my cup while I read a book or listen to George Winston's relaxing soundtracks. I give it a B (good) because I'm not typically a fan of chai because they're usually too sweet for me, but this one is quite balanced.

Zhena's Gypsy Tea Coconut Chai

Once I opened the tin of Zhena’s Gypsy Tea I knew I was in for a heavily spiced tea. The scent of the tea bag captures you with bold chai spice. Coconut is what intrigued me to get this though; sweetness added to sweet spice. It smells like it works too. Zhena may have proven that her tea is a fine popuri, but I grade the drink.

As it smelled before steeping, the air of the tea is boldly sweet but the coconut is hardly detectable. More shocking than its first impressions is how soft the taste is. All I get is cinnamon and in no proportion to that compares to the scent. A trace of the coconut sweet is left as an aftertaste, but once again weakly.

This isn’t a tea, this is tainted water. I’ve tried steeping it longer, letting it cool, and adding cream but none of that has brought out more of the palate. I’m leaving Zhena’s Gypsy Tea Coconut Chai with a C (decent) and not a C- because of the potent smell. The rest of the tea bags will be popuri.

Zhena's Gypsy Tea Red Lavender

This one is a favorite of my fiance. She has a cup with a touch of honey whenever she wants to go to bed, and it works. "Red tea" isn't the standard traditional tea camllia sinensis but rooibos (roy-bos), a tea with many anti-oxidants and NO caffeine! So it obviously should be a choice for all of you yoga and health-nuts out their.Let's move on to what matters to us: Does it taste good?

It does taste good. Smelling the tea before and after being steeped all you can get is lavender because it overpowers the rooibos. Tasting the final product you'll find out what rooibos tastes like. It's rather hard to describe but I'll put it as a rich and slightly nutty sweetness. Of course the lavender is still present but doesn't conquer the taste of the rooibos. As I stated before, me and my finance typically serve this with a touch of clover honey to even the sweetness of the lavender. An aftertaste develops as you drink your cup that's the floral element of the lavender, not the sweet one.

Because lavender isn't a favorite flavor of mine I give Zhena's Red Lavender a solid B (good), but my finance and mother would easily grade it as an A- (excellent).