Avanaa
Edit CompanyRecent Tasting Notes
I saw this tea/company while grocery shopping, and I decided to give it a try since it’s not every day that a whole new tea company pops up in the grocery aisle. I’ve done some very light research and it seems like these cocoa husk teas are only a small area of focus of the company, and not their main bread & butter as far as products go. So, that’s kind of interesting to me!
I know that legally they don’t need to list out all of the spices in the ingredients and that just writing “spices” is compliant, but it always bums me out when companies choose not to. I would much rather have the full ingredients list as a consumer. Inspecting the dry leaf, I see quite a lot of cardamom along with clove, cinnamon, and ginger. I think maybe a small bit of a fennel, too? I didn’t look super close, but these were all very visually apparent.
Steeped up it’s pretty nice tasting! In the spectrum of cacao teas I’ve tried, I think this could be richer but it’s also not as thin/watery as some I’ve come across either. Like a light hot chocolate sort of flavour, but supported with warming spice. Cardamom is the strongest by a landslide and that’s really not surprising to me given how many full pods I saw when scooping. I like cardamom and chocolate paired together a lot, so no surprise this worked for me!
I’m surprised that companies don’t have to legally list the exact spices used in a product… I know someone who is deathly allergic to clove. Seems a liability waiting to happen!
There’s a but more to it, but basically in US/CA you can collectively list any spices in a product under the umbrella of “spice” with the exception of salt, any spice used for colourings (ex. Paprika), priority allergens (ex. Sesame), or anything “traditionally recognized as a food” (ex. garlic or celery). Though you can technically skirt the colourings portion by listing as “spices used as natural colouring” or similar verbiage. It is unfortunate for people with allergies, but the idea is basically that it protects proprietary recipes – basically the same logic as why the composition of natural/artificial flavourings do not have to be declared.
This is the FDA’s definition of a spice, in case you were curious:
Aromatic vegetable substances, in the whole, broken, or ground form, whose significant function in food is seasoning rather than nutrition. They are true to name and from them no portion of any volatile oil or other flavoring principle has been removed.