Passage

Going with 73 on the rating. A good tea but not my favorite from this company

Ashmanra’s Sipdown Challenge | May 2023 | A flavored black tea

I reorganized my tea stash yesterday and realized that things are… getting out of hand, especially after the TTB came through. It doesn’t help that my sipdown pace has really slowed over the past few months. I did set aside a bunch of packets that are sipdown-ready, so hopefully that will help!

Anyway, it’s a cool, grey, rainy day and chocolate-hazelnut sounded like a winning combination. This blend smells so amazing, but the mouthfeel is disappointingly thin. I am enjoying it more than when I first rated/reviewed it, so I’ll bump my rating up a smidge, but in general I’m fine saying a permanent goodbye to Passage.

2023 sipdown count: 33

This tea smells great, but when I tried it hot, it tasted like almost nothing. I let it cool, and now it’s pretty nice. The chocolate is quite rich. I get a bit of extra desserty flavor, but I wouldn’t be able to pinpoint it as hazelnut specifically. This is lovely both at room temperature and refrigerated. I don’t think I’d reorder a larger amount, but I had a good time with it. The chocolate flavor is quite authentic and nice. It has a pleasant richness.

Sipdown!

Taken without milk – because I was curious. Still smells and tastes like hazelnut brittle and (a darker) chocolate, but the finish is kind of bitter in an alcohol way; charitably, I could call it rum.. The aftertaste is 100% hazelnut though, which is lovely. Not bad, but definitely prefer it with some kind of milk to soften out the flavouring bitters and make it into a flat but tasty Nutella.

Sipdown! (11 | 84)

I really should stop ordering teas with chocolate flavoring…

There are some elements of the chocolate here that are pleasant, like the tinge of bitterness that makes it seem a bit more authentic. But there’s a booziness that knocks it all the way back to the other direction, into super fake chocolate territory… Also the base seems rather thin and flavorless.

I do enjoy the roasty nut flavor here. But otherwise it’s a no for me.

SIpdown 27- 2021
Such an excellent chocolate/hazelnut flavor going on. Sad to see it go.

Passage promises to combine black tea, hazelnut and chocolate. Its overpowering flavor is chocolate. The hazelnut adds a creamy richness to the tea that is very welcome. I am cutting down on excess fat and sugar in my diet so this provides mouth joy without the calories. Another top notch tea from August Uncommon Teas. Great suggestion! I’m glad I followed through and bought from them.

Oversteeped, but it was still nice – more hazelnut than chocolate, which is the balance I want out of a chocolate and hazelnut blend. The flavour of the nut is way more interesting to me, and harder to convey, whereas I can get a chocolate tea just about anywhere…

Also, am I crazy or didn’t this tea used to have a longer name!?

Huh. I guess the name of this tea was shortened to “Passage” some point after this tea was added to the Steepster database. I had to google Passage du Desir, thinking it was one of the passages in Paris, alleys often with glass ceilings that have turned into shopping strips with cute cafes and shops lining them. A quick google search turns up reference to one passage with not much detail, but most of the results are of a sex toy or “adult novelty” shop. Was this tea named after a street or an adult toy shop? My curiosity is peaked.

Dry, this tea has that rich dark chocolate scent that reminds me of prunes for some reason. It is a deep chocolate smell. I drank most of this cup absentmindedly while running morning errands. As I sit with the rest of the cooled cup I notice the dark chocolate in the sip and finish. It is subtle and might be made more substantial with cream, but I’ll have to test that theory out on my next cup. There is a slight barley scent when I’m sipping and I’m not able to pick out the hazelnut in the flavors. Overall I’m still undecided on exactly how I feel about this tea.

GCTTB6

Consider me surprised when the first thing I tasted was roasted chestnuts. I decided to look up this tea to see if that was supposed to be there and googling “Passage du Desir” produced some pretty interesting results, non of which were this tea. When I did finally find this tea, it seems that flavor was indeed purposely present. Unfortunately some flavor notes were lost on that I really, really wanted to taste and so if I am being honest, I was a bit disappointed. Still I am grateful to Sil for adding this to the TTB because I heard great things and probably would have blindly bought this and not really loved it. Not that it was bad, just not my preference. Check out my full review here: http://sororiteasisters.com/2017/04/11/passage-du-desir-from-august-uncommon/