Smells woody and yes, like cocoa dry. Brewed and intensely sniffed, it smells more like a milk chocolate truffle, which is pretty great. Actually, the longer it sits the more and more it smells and tastes uncannily like store brand hot chocolate, the kind you drink from packets as a kid after playing in the snow. Which I like—like “bad” mac and cheese, some pedestrian flavors are just comforting. There’s a roundness, a richness at the end of the sip to go with the sugary chocolate taste, as if it really is pour-boiling-water-over-sugary-brown-packet-granules mug cocoa. It even has the ever-so-slight salty aftertaste (maybe that’s because I brewed an oolong for this cup earlier though, ha…)! Amazing similarity.
I usually don’t care about appearance but I’ll also note it’s a pretty ruby gold hue in the cup that’s appealing. Yum. Doesn’t need milk or sugar to make it taste like processed sugary hot cocoa, it just magically already does somehow. (That said, it will happily take milk and become even richer.)
This is a great addition to my stock of non-caffeinated dessert teas, a category I sorely need more of.