Today's Tea: Saigon Chai

Organic Saigon Chai from DAVIDsTEA

Ingredients: Assam Black tea, Saigon Cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, cloves, pink peppercorns. With organic and natural flavouring.

Caffeine Level: 2

(From DAVIDsTEA: Organic Saigon Chai)


Steph's Thoughts

DT has changed up their website so I can't copy-paste text anymore. So I might just leave out the descriptions from now on, and just describe the tea in my post.


This tea is a wonderful chai that is laced with cinnamon. Saigon cinnamon is one of the finest cinnamons in the world, but after the Vietnam War, exportation was halted. The cinnamon is complimented by the ginger. I can't really taste the ginger, but I know that if it would be left out, the tea would be empty.

I've had a craving for chai tea today, and this really hit the spot. I bought the chai collection, which is 8 different types of chai tea (I would link it, but it's not featured on the website anymore). This was the first one I pulled out of the box. I've never had it before, but the aroma was enticing and slightly intoxicating.

One of the suggestions on the site is that you drink it iced with sweetened condensed milk. I can imagine this would be absolutely fabulous. I typically drink my chai heavily sweetened, but I decided today to a) follow the brewing instructions and only leave my teabag in for five minutes, and b) attempt unsweetened chai. It's nomtacular, really.

I was expecting the peppercorns and the ginger to give it a really big KICK (because peppercorns and ginger are spicy), but they don't. They provide a subtle flavour that compliments the cinnamon and mellows the tea.

Also, this isn't a cinnamon hearts kind of cinnamon - the in-your-face, here-I-am kind of OMG CINNAMON. It's a very mellow cinnamon. A natural cinnamon, you might say. I don't know if you've ever smelled cinnamon wood. I don't mean a cinnamon stick, I mean a chunk cut from the tree without curling it. It smells very different from the stuff you usually eat or cook with. I think of it as the "hippie cinnamon," laid back, but still very much alive and robust. That's what this tea is.

Definitely worth many cups.

I'm going to try brewing it in a pot of warm milk on the stove later on. We'll see how that goes.