Tea of the week: Indian tea, by Teekanne

I must confess that tea was never on my priority list of tastes. As someone drinking coffee - and by that I mean real, Turkish sugarless coffee - since 14 yo, and loving it, I used to associate tea with my weak moments when I was having a cold or was unable to eat anything else. 

While I was living in Japan, I tried a lot of green tea, but simply as one of the drinks I was having, without adding too much emphasis on the ceremony and significance (I know, ignorant me). The only type of tea that I always loved is the Indian one, prepared with a lot of ingredients and spices - the recipe in another post, when I will try to make my own, more than 5 years after I had it in a purely Indian ambiance.

As I always want to try expanding my knowledge, but also due to some family pressure for diminishing my daily consumption of coffee - more than 5 big mugs - I realized that I should start trying more sorts of tea, at least for therapeutic and health reasons, but also for more writing inspiration. 

For diminishing the betrayal of my old love for coffee, I wanted to start the conversion process with a sort of tea that I know and loved more than anything else. This week, I am experiencing the pleasures of the Indian tea, by Teekanne, a 130-year traditional enterprise in Germany. 

It smells very good, a combination of black tea - to do not drink it in the evening - vanilla, chicoree, cardamom  black pepper and ginger. The sweetness of vanilla alleviates the strong spices. It is pleasant hot or cold, but preferably not when you want to sleep in a couple of hours. At the first cup, I did not realize how strong it is. I only needed to find out as was coping with some sleep deprivation after 5 hours later. Blame for this my lack of familiarity with the strong teas, as in the case of coffee, I can drink a big mug at 10 pm and sleep as a baby one hour later. This Indian tea can be drink with milk and tasted together with some lemon cakes or biscuits (in the perfect English tradition). It is tasty enough for me for not requiring any pinch of sugar, but I suppose that it can be matched perfectly with brown sugar.