Pu-Erh Chorange

Sil posting her tealog of this reminded me that I have some too, and I’m really feeling the pu-erhs these days. So, I wanted to give it another try. Unfortunately, I too only got orange out of it. Light, juicy orange, yet still just orange. There’s a bit of a dryness to it that I could attribute to chocolate, but it’s faint.

this is an interesting tea, sent my way by Kallieboo! it smells heavenly! orange, chocolatey goodness and likely something i would have picked myself. Steeped though, it loses the chocolate flavour and becomes more of an orange puerh. While that doesn’t bother me, it’s not quite what it claims to be. It IS a decent puerh though and one that i wouldn’t turn down. I like that the flavouring doesn’t overpower the puerh taste and that the puerh is a deep earthy sort of taste. Overall a decent cup of tea, though i wish it was a little more chocolate orange instead of just being orange. ")

Today is day number four of Pu Erh week and I feel like doing something festive in celebration of it being very cold and slowly creeping closer to Christmas. I made myself a nice little Perler Christmas Tree and had a bit of Pu Erh that does the best impersonation of a Christmas Time favorite that I have ever seen.

Pu Erh Chorange by Adagio teas has a wonderful portmanteau name and that makes me happy. Part of the Terra Sampler pack (and The Boo Erh Giveaway mentioned at the start of the week) it is a blend of Chocolate, Pu Erh, Oranges, and Blue Cornflowers. I will be honest, I have no idea why the cornflowers are there, they do not really match the aesthetic, but I am just being picky. The aroma is astoundingly similar to one of my favorite things about Christmas, the Chocolate Orange ball. Ever had one of them, they are a ball shaped like and orange that you bang onto something hard and it splits into ‘orange’ wedges of orange flavored chocolate. They are addictive and this tea smells just like one. At first all I noticed was the blending of chocolate and orange but the more I snuffled around in the tea (yes, you can think of a pig rooting for truffles) the more I noticed an earthy aroma letting me know that it was a Pu Erh and not an impostor.

Giving the tea a nice steeping brings out more earthy aromas with a hint of loam along with the potent orange and chocolate. The tea is very bright, if an aroma can light up a room and make it more cheerful, this one would do it. The liquid is very citrus heavy and sweet with milder notes of chocolate and earthiness.

The first thing I noticed was, wow, that is a smooth tea! The flavor, the mouthfeel, everything about it is smooth, I have a similar reaction when stuffing chocolate orange wedges in my mouth so the similarity continues. The taste blends chocolate and oranges together very well, it is balanced which can be hard with such dominating flavors, but what about the Pu Erh? No worries, it is there, it sneaks in at the very end of the midtaste and blooms into a delightful earthy flavor as an aftertaste and leaves a lingering sweetness. Out of curiosity I added a touch of cream, it surprisingly did not curdle (yay!) but didn’t really add much to the tea. As the tea cools it does get a touch earthier with a bit of a mineral taste. I think I just found my new Christmas cheer tea!

For blog and photos (and a Christmas Tree): http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2013/12/adagio-teas-pu-erh-chorange-tea-review.html

So far this is the most earthy of the flavored puerhs from Adagio that I’ve tried. This one you can actually taste the puerh in with the orange with a bit of chocolate in the background. Very interesting, not something that I would go out of my way to buy again but I am giving it a higher rating for being the first chocolate flavored tea that I’ve encountered that wasn’t horrible.

The chocolate and orange flavouring was not bad, but overpowering, and the scent was difficult to remove from my infuser afterwards. The pu-erh seemed to have no flavour at all. I plan to give this another chance at some point, but for now I’m quite glad it was in a free sampler.

I’ve had this one for a while and really thought I logged it, but apparently not!

Back when I first started getting into tea, I absolutely loved Davids Tea’s Chocolate Orange. I then stopped ordering from DT for a while for no particular reason, and by the time I got back around to them, it was gone. I’ve been looking for a replacement since then and saw this recently on Adagio’s website and was super excited to try it out.

From my memory of DT’s Chocolate Orange, it was super flavorful and chocolatey, with the pu-erh and orange backing it up without being overwhelming (though I may be pulling a Great Gatsby here!). Chorange definitely doesn’t compare to that, but it’s still nice. So far, I’ve found that the best way to drink it is after a quick rinse and with no milk. I always forget and put milk in because that’s my habit with chocolate teas, but with this one it mutes all the flavors to the point where I just get a bit of earthiness from the pu-erh.

Without milk, this one is a lot more orangey. I don’t taste a super obvious chocolate flavor, but I feel like the earthiness of the pu-erh kind of comes across as a dark chocolate. The flavors meld nicely without one overpowering the other, and this is a decent tea overall but I’m not really looking for an orange pu-erh at the moment. If you want a smooth and not overpowering orange pu-erh, definitely check this out! While I have no problems finishing this up, I probably won’t get it again any time soon because it’s just not what I want. My search for an orange chocolate tea continues!

I don’t see any tasting notes for this tea from me, which is really surprising because I finished it today. I really really like this tea. That is a somewhat unpopular opinion here because a lot of people gave it low ratings – metallic taste, artificial orange, puerh not strong enough…but I seriously like this one A LOT.

The puerh is strong enough to resteep several times when you mix steeps like I do and the chocolate and orange seem nicely balanced to me. I had it with an everything bagel and it was awesome.

It doesn’t taste metallic to me, the orange doesn’t taste any more fake than any other orange I have had, and the chocolate doesn’t have that weird mildew aroma that chocolate flavor sometimes has. I REALLY like it.

I am sad to see it go! Maybe I will order it again someday. This pouch was a gift from my daughter, Superanna, who bought it when she was traveling at the brick and mortar Adagio store, leading me to exclaim, “They have a brick and mortar store???” I seriously thought they were online only.

Adagio Advent Calendar – Day 5

I don’t have a lot of puerh experience, and it’s not really something I’m interested in pursuing at this point, since honestly I’m drinking almost all flavored teas right now anyway. But I find the ripe puerh used in flavored blends is usually earthy and mild, with no weird fishy aromas, so I’m not too worried about this one. Dry scent is very strong on the orange, which is encouraging.

The orange flavor is the strongest note in the steeped tea as well, and it’s an orange essential oil sort of note. There is chocolate as well, but it tastes fairly artificial to me, sort of like a darker chocolate Tootsie Roll. It’s not terrible, but I think I would prefer just the cacao nibs and no flavoring, even if it means a more subtle chocolate note. Chocolate flavoring always reminds me of cheap waxy chocolate, like chocolate coins or those cheap Easter chocolates. I suppose that’s probably because they use chocolate flavoring in those things…

ANYWAY, tangent over! The puerh here is mellow with a sweet earthy flavor, which I think makes a nice base for a chocolate orange tea.

I thought this was fairly enjoyable. The chocolate flavoring kind of ruins it for me, and for that reason I wouldn’t order this one. But the puerh base is perfectly pleasant and suitable for puerh newbies.

(today’s advent teas: https://www.instagram.com/p/CIbA7q0g6Fu/)

This one smells unpleasant, so I kind of procrastinated taking the first sip. At first I was unsure…but I think…I like this? It tastes like an orange-filled chocolate, and I feel like they made that fake orange flavor pretty accurate. The chocolate isn’t very strong. It’s more like they’re placing you with the idea of chocolate than actually giving you any. I bought this to give my dad since orange chocolate is his favorite combo. I wouldn’t buy this again for myself, but I hope he likes it! Regardless, this would taste better with a black or herbal base. I kind of like the earthiness, but I don’t need it.

Trick or Treat! Still feeling exhausted… not sure why. Didn’t even have time to get up and make some tea this morning before work. Going all day without tea was so painful, I had to get a Dr. Pepper from the vending machine because not having any caffeine was hitting me hard!

Usually in the evenings I make tisanes, but I’m just so happy to have access to my tea again I decided to do this one tonight. I love chocolate oranges, and would happily enjoy one if it appeared in a Halloween bucket, even if it was leftover from last year’s Christmas.

This is… pretty mediocre, though. The tea just tastes really metallic. I have no idea if that’s just a note of this particular pu-ehr, a result of the particular orange flavoring Adagio is using, both, or what, but it is not really agreeing with me at all. The tea is quite earthy, and sometimes the metallic quality comes off a bit more mineral paired with that earthy flavor, which isn’t too bad, but then this really artificial orange flavor coats the tongue and it just seems to have this odd metallic quality to the flavor. I’m not really picking up much chocolate; there are some subtle cocoa notes, and the tea is quite sweet, but mostly it is just very earthy, orangey, and mineral/metallic. It just doesn’t really work for me.