Stormy Night (Organic)

I get intense chocolate cravings… I mean, intense. (Stormy Night, to the rescue!) This tea has chunks of chocolate, coconut, vanilla, and cinnamon. I mean… can it get any better?! An after-dinner-snuggled-up-on-the-couch-with-a-great-book cup of tea. Who’s with me?!

I had this over the weekend at my parents house – my mom had a sample of this and I wanted to try it.

Firstly, this review won’t be 100% accurate since ALL my favourite teas were tasting funny on their well water.

The tea looks like dirt in the cup. Like literally, the water was dirty, and left a ring around the mug and everything. It smells kinda musty too. Lots of cinnamon flavours. It smells just like cinnamon hot chocolate, which is pretty delicious. Unfortunately.. doesn’t taste as good as it smells!. Again, this could have been due to the well water but it just didn’t taste like it smelled. It was watery and gritty and icky. No chocolate flavour, and the cinnamon just tasted dirty. I did not like this as much as i thought I would. Didn’t finish the cup.
I should have brought the rest of the sample to try on my water to see if it’s any better, but alas, I forgot.

This was the first tea I tried with chocolate in it, and it is way up there on my list of all-time favorite teas!

The taste is comforting and makes you feel good and warm. It’s has an interesting blend of spices that go really well with the chocolate and coconut. It’s perfection in a cup! Personally, I think that all the teas with chocolate in them are special and so good.

I don’t think this would taste good iced; it is more meant for cuddling on the couch with that special someone, or alone with a good movie!

Had this one recommended to me by one of employees at my DT – kudos to her, because I LOVED this one. I had milk added to my to-go cup (as I generally do with most of my black teas) and mmmm, this was a nice treat on a fall afternoon. I think I like coconut in my teas provided it is subtle, as I got with this cup. And vanilla is also becoming a favourite of mine!

This is another one I’ve had sitting around in my cupboard.. mentally the flavor combination sounds delicious..in reality it’s not so much. I think i was expecting more of a chocolate coconut taste rather than a cinnamon tea with the other flavors as background noise.

Smell (Dry): It’s a punch of chocolate and toasted coconut

Smell (Steeped): I get more of a cinnamon scent

Taste: When I first tried this tea last year I drank it black. I found the cinnamon was quite overpowering and the other flavors were fighting to be noticed. I also found it pretty spicy – almost like someone had put a bit too much cinnamon into the batch.

Today I added a bit of almond milk and honey into my cup and it toned down the cinnamon a bit and brought out the chocolate and coconut a bit. However, as soon as I finish this bag I don’t think I’ll be buying it again.

I swear if there just wasn’t as much cinnamon in it, this tea would be spot on!

I prefer the spicy chocolate/cinnamon mix in a hot chocolate itself instead of a tea, that’s for sure. But it is decent.

My coworker gave me this tea (among many!) because she wants to cut back on acidic drinks.
At first sip I could have sworn I was drinking cinnamon rooibos chai from DAVIDs. The most powerful taste is the cinnamon followed a little bit by chocolate.
This tea is alright, but not for me as there is just too much cinnamon and not enough of a “tea flavor”. I won’t buy this one for myself.

I want to like this one a lot more than I do, but it just doesn’t hold together well enough. I think there are too many ingredients and something gets confused along the way. However, it is really great for when I’m watching a movie, and it tastes just great brewed in a cup of hot milk. When you don’t know what you want, or just want a little bit of everything, this is a good tea to try.

This was another free sample that I got with my latest order, and I figured: what could go wrong? It can’t be as bad as coffee chai.

And, to my sheer delight, it wasn’t as bad. Granted, while the water was boiling I meticulously pulled out as many pieces of coconut that I could find since I HATE coconut. Since the pieces in this tea were so large, even though previous users had noted they couldn’t taste it, I can pick up the taste of coconut in President’s Choice Decadent chocolate chip cookies. Don’t believe me that it’s an ingredient? Look on the package. Dried coconut and coconut oil. Told you. My palate is sensitive to it. Gross.

Anyway. So I picked out most of the coconut, dumped the rest in the filter and steeped. Steeped until the chocolate dissolved, swirled it around a few times, then sipped. And…yuck. The smell was SO STRONG. Both the dried tea and the steeped tea. But the taste? Somewhat murky chocolate tasting but with no real punch. And I had to use my imagination to pick up any kind of chilli taste.

Definitely not a “would buy” tea. I didn’t hate it, but I certainly didn’t like it.

Dry: Smells primarily like cinnamon with a faint background of coconut, malt, and chocolate. Pretty loose tea with visible coconut and chocolate.

Steeped: Cinnamon scent more than anything else. Pretty light brown color, has a little bit of a film on the top.

Taste: Cinnamon! With nothing added, I was overwhelmed by the cinnamon taste from the first steep. If you love cinnamon, this is for you. I like it generally, but do not love it so I was hard pressed to truly love this tea. The second steep was a slightly weaker version than the first, but I started to detect the tea itself along with chocolate, but cinnamon still dominated. With a splash of milk added after a sip of the second steep, the tea actually became much more pleasant for me- I could taste the chocolate more prominently and a hint of coconut and creamy vanilla. I’m not sure about the overall flavor combo for my palate- might just be too many things competing with the cinnamon. I added a splash of milk to the third steep also and it was similar to the second, but significantly weaker.

This tea makes me think of autumn. I enjoyed the second steep with milk much more than the first once I was able to get over the cinnamon punch. It would not be a staple in my house, but it wouldn’t be amiss for those rare cold nights when I want hot cinnamon and chocolate in front of the fire.