These mini gum ball-size pearls smell like cherry-chocolate.
Now being from Teavana, I’m not sure if that’s a storage issue or how the tea actually smells bc they have lots of flavored teas with strong essences there. I got this as a gift from Starbucks club so I didn’t care.
Used three pearls in my 4 ounce gaiwan and 200F water.
Did a good rinse on them to loosen them up a bit.
I have some pearls that look just like this from another tea company but they smell nothing like this so I think that these have been sitting next to a cherry-chocolate flavored something at Teavana. Still, I want it to taste like cherry-chocolate now.
Liquor is a light orange color and smells like the cherry-chocolate. The flavor is smoky, chocolatey with a hint of cherry.
With my second steeping, the pearls have really loosened up and revealed large twisty leaves. Liquor is a deeper auburn orange color now and smells more smoky with still that hint of chocolate-cherry but doesn’t quite taste like it. It’s more of just a scent. It tastes more on the smoky tobacco end. Tastes ok.
Did one more steeping and I think that three is all I would do on these in the gaiwan, because the flavor started being very one note in tobacco taste and just flat so I stopped there.
Flavors: Cherry, Chocolate, Tobacco
