White Chocolate Orange Tea

Aha! I found you. I sampled what I believe was this tea today at The English Tea Room (at least, the description from the menu and the description here on Steepster were almost identical to one another, both specifically mentioning Spanish orange and white chocolate). They’re not terribly good about advertising exactly where their teas come from… I’v known for a while that they do source at least some of theirs from the Metropolitan Tea Company, but I was rifling through Culinary Teas’s selections, and many of them look and sound familiar, so I think they source some from that company as well. Anyway, I had a pot of this with my chocolate chip cherry scones (divine!) and my eggs benedict (sumptuous!).

The aroma of the tea was very much white chocolate, which impressed me, but I couldn’t detect very much orange. The same held true when I tasted it—no matter what I did to it, I couldn’t make the orange flavor come out. The white chocolate was there, though, and the tea base seemed to be light and not overpowering. Tasty, but I wished I could’ve tasted the orange. So, meh.

I recently ordered this tea because I like the flavors of white chocolate and orange and decided to give it a try. Imagine my disappointment when I realized that this tastes exactly the same as English Tea Store’s Chocolate Orange blend, where it sells for a significantly lower price.

It’s not a bad tea, although I honestly it smells better than it tastes. When I open the bag the chocolate and orange aromas are subtle but noticeable. When I brew the tea, the flavors disappear almost entirely. I’m going to make other attempts using slightly cooler water and shorter steeping time to see if that helps bring out the flavor.

Unfortunately, I’m so irritated by the fact that I paid almost twice as much for what seems to be the same blend as the one sold by English Tea Store, that it’s hard for me to recommend this.