Dark Chocolate Orange

Sipdown

I found this in the sipdown bin and decided to top it off. I’m not really sure if this was the cup for me. I like the idea of a chocolate orange tea, but this was one of those cups that really depended on the day. This last cup was inviting by the smell, but the flavor seemed muted. There was a touch of orange chocolate, and maybe the risk of adding milk may have been worthwhile, however, I never took the chance to try it out.

1/27/22
Sipdown from advent calendar… one that i’m on the fence about. On the one hand I like it when I put in gobs of sugar. On the other hand, I really don’t like chocolate flavoring. This one has enough orange to mask that, so it’s ok. Not my favorite.

I was pleasantly surprised by this tea! I find chocolate orange a bit hit-or-miss in general because it’s frequently so bitter, and chocolate tea has disappointed me before. I brewed this in the morning and kept it in my travel mug to enjoy all day, and I never tired of it.

I’m not a huge fan of sweeteners added to the tea for me; in this case it helped the bitterness of the chocolate and orange and felt balanced. I’m usually content to wait until the end of advent season to order something I liked – goodness knows I have enough – but I needed more of this.

DAVIDsTEA advent, day 4

I tried this as part of DAVIDsTEA Advent Calendar 2021 – Day 4. The stevia made it too sweet but otherwise good with strong orange oil and rich flavors. The second and third steeping we actually a little better. I would have gone for a fourth but dropped the sachet on the floor, oops.

DAVIDsTEA Advent Calendar 2021 – Day 4

So I actually really love chocolate oranges, especially the dark ones. But I don’t tend to like teas with chocolate flavoring, so we’ll see how this goes…

Yeah… no. This tastes very artificial to me, in both the orange and the chocolate. The orange reminds me of some kind of cleaning product, very sharp but not in a natural way. I can definitely taste the chocolate flavoring, which reminds me of these chocolate-flavored vitamins I had as a kid. And then there’s the stevia adding a cloying sweetness, especially at the end of the sip.

So basically, I don’t enjoy any aspect of this tea ha ha. And then there’s the fact that’s it’s quite cloudy from all the melted chocolate chips, which I always find deeply unappetizing…

This came in the subscription box. It’s probably one I’d be curious about on my own, with the promise of two flavors that work so well together. I want to like this and some cups I like more than others, but it’s flavor is thin compared to other teas I’ve had with these ingredients and has stevia in it which is so distracting. I think I could figure out a way to enjoy this if it wasn’t for the stevia.

D is for.. Dark Chocolate Orange

Between the dashboard being down and me having to travel a bunch, with long drives through boring countryside, I fell out of the habit of checking steepster. I was in the middle of drinking teas alphabetically and kept drinking this one and forgetting to log it, so I’m going to do my best to sum it up.

I tried this both hot and as an iced latte. I personally prefer it hot, I feel like more of the flavor comes through that way. It tastes much more like a Terry’s Chocolate Orange. I do miss the pu’erh of the old one, it brought something special that this one doesn’t quite have. But I know realistically that the pu’erh is probably intimidating or unappealing to a lot of people and therefore a tough sell. This blend does have stevia, and when it’s hot I can get past it enough to enjoy the tea. However, when I made it as an iced latte, the stevia ended up front and center and super strong to the point where I couldn’t taste the other flavors. It was pretty intense but my fiance liked it that way, so he ended up finishing off the iced latte.

So I already liked this tea but did sometimes find it a little too bitter but i tried it today with a little chocolate oat milk and it was a game changer!!!!! It’s like it was crunchy dark chocolate but the oat milk smoothed it out and added a touch more sweetness

This is the third (and final) new tea from the Autumn subscription box – new, in this case, just meaning teas that released for the first time through the subscription box…

I waited a while to do this tasting note because I wanted to try the tea again – I don’t drink chocolate teas often and it’d been many months since I last tried it. I think potentially even all the way back to when we were wrapping the development for it!? It’s not the first time DT has done a chocolate orange tea. The one I think most people will be familiar with is the Chocolate Orange Pu’erh and then also Mocha Orange Biscotti; although there was more going on that just chocolate/orange with that blend.

I’m definitely in the camp of people who liked Chocolate Orange Pu’erh a lot – I just thought the balance of two flavours there was so good and it was the first ever blended pu’erh that I ever tried (I think maybe the first pu’erh in general!?) so there’s a bit of a special association there. However, I remember selling that tea in stores and a lot of people didn’t like the pu’erh base – it was one of the more earthy and forward tasting pu’erhs that we carried at that time and pu’erh is one of those flavours that definitely doesn’t agree with everyone and I think can take a little adjusting to.

This blend seems, to me, a lot more immediately approachable for the average person. It’s a clear and distinct chocolate and orange flavour, and pretty sweet without sacrificing the body and thickness of the black tea or getting too much of that weird filmy/oily quality that sometimes happens with chocolate blends. I think the orange is stronger in this blend than Chocolate Orange Pu’erh – certainly brighter, at the very least. Part of that is the stevia in the blend – it kind of boosts/lifts those orange notes more to the top of the sip. I don’t personally find stevia off putting but I know a lot of people do, however I think it’s really mild in this blend all things considered & blends quite seamlessly into the orange flavour in my opinion.

Overall I enjoy this blend – I’d rank it higher than Mocha Orange Biscotti but a little lower than Chocolate Orange Pu’erh, in terms of my own preferences. I hope other people enjoy it too!

Friendly reminder that I do not numerically rate DAVIDsTEA blends as I’m currently employed there and it would be an obvious conflict of interest. Any blends you see with numerical ratings were rated prior to my employment there. These reviews are a reflection of my personal thoughts and feelings regarding the teas, and not the company’s.

(DavidsTea 158)

Got my DT subscription box today! Hopefully this isn’t a spoiler for anyone… sorry! I initially assumed this was the revamped Oh Christmas Treat, but then realized it’s on a black, not a pu’erh base, which is awesome. And, I quite enjoyed it. It’s similar in flavour to Butiki’s chocolate orange, although the base tea not being Premium Taiwanese Assam definitely ranks it below that delicious concoction. But – it was still delicious. It does seem to contain stevia (boo) but I wasn’t really put off by it. Does likely mean I won’t repurchase, but realistically, 25g is plenty anyhow.