One of the things I enjoy with either newly attempted teas, or favorite and familiar ones, is to breathe deeply from the freshly opened packaging and take in the scent of the dried tea. Since this concoction is labeled as vanilla with chai, I had a very well-defined, preconceived notion of how this would smell. Not even close...

It took 1/2 to 3/4 of a minute to figure out what the familiar yet unconventional scent was--not tea, not much vanilla nor even chai spices, particularly, but instead: buttered movie popcorn! While I like movie-theater popcorn, it doesn't seem like an ideal tea flavor. Fortunately the taste is much closer to the advertised packaging, and the creamy vanilla stands out really well. Yet there was still a background buttery, nutty, corny taste in there, probably still delivered through the olfactory pipe.

Overall, I like this tea. Bigelow black teas seem to vary a lot in quality and richness, but this one rendered a really dark and flavorful cup, and I could taste the black tea more than smell it. The blend has a lot going on, with noticeably different dry aroma, wet aroma, taste and aftertaste, and more refined palates than mine might even tease out more flavors and scents. Good stuff to quaff on a cold morning...

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