Tea-flavor blends are like marriages: a wide spectrum of compatibilities and results, from the "opposites attracted" who somehow live happily-ever-after to the seemingly alike soulmates on the road to disastrous divorce, vice versa, and every outcome in between.

In that context, leave it to a Canadian tea company to marry chai with maple. Who else would have thought of it, eh? Tropical Asian spices mate with a tree-sap extract from the snowy forests of northeastern North America and live in a house constructed of robust black tea from China (Keemun) and Sri Lanka (Ceylon). And guess what--it works! This is a very good product. Neither chai spices nor maple are timid wallflowers, flavor-wise. Yet the result of balancing them nicely, as Murchie's has done, is a smooth fusion that tastes like its own entity, a unified one where the individual tastes still can be appreciated for what they are (as in a good marriage). The dry-bag, wet-bag and in-cup aromas are a very close match for the flavor, so WYSmell-IWYG, and the color duly brews up dark in short order.

I'm only doing minor deductions from what otherwise could be near-top score for using "natural and artificial" maple (per the website) instead of all-natural, and for not being just a bit stronger in overall aroma, as it could be. Still, this is a winner, and I'll be getting another batch next time I do a Murchie's run, whether online or in person.

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