Chocolate Pumpkin Pie

Posting my first tealog in months, due in part to the heroic efforts of Best Buy to return my laptop to me in working condition! Love those guys.

Anyway, on to the tea! This tea smells divine… The pumpkin is an afterthought to the chocolate, which smells very dark and strong, but also almost cloyingly sweet. The scent actually fills up my whole room better than my scented oil warmer, and it makes me very excited to taste!

The flavoring of this drink is strong, and the black tea base is a bit weak… It gets stronger at the tea cools. The chocolate flavor is pretty strong, and the most strong flavor in the tea. The pumpkin is different than any other pumpkin tea I’ve had… It has more of a roasted pumpkin flavor, when most teas taste of raw squash. I wouldn’t order from Della Terra specifically FOR this tea, but if I were ordering already, I’d pick up some.

I like this one but I don’t get a strong a strong pumpkin taste. The spice and cinnamon is appealing and with the days that I’ve been having lately it’s a nice tea to sip and smell. I actually had this yesterday too but couldn’t remember what the name was :) I was thinking it was fireside spice for a bit, good thing I checked.

I was VERY leery of this tea on seeing the name. Chocolate pie yes, Pumpkin pie, yes. Both together…seems a bit rich for my blood. The tea in the bag smells pretty good, very ‘crusty’ which suprised me as pumpkin is such a strong scent. But it wasn’t a bad thing. In the cup, its really really nice and mild compared to what I’d expected. Drinking it luke warm makes all of the flavors blend well, but I still don’t get much chocolate. That is not a bad thing because the hint that IS there is lovely.

First time trying this blend. I attempted to drink it straight but it’s a bit too spicy for my palate. I added a heavy splash of almond milk and some brown sugar in an attempt to tone down the spice. That said, there is still quite a bit of spice, even when combined with (non-dairy) milk. The sample I received is large enough to try this tea as a latte, so I will probably go that route the next time I have a hankering for black tea in the morning. Unfortunately, the amount of spice overwhelmed my palate this morning so I didn’t taste a ton of either the chocolate or the pumpkin. I’ll see what happens when I prepare this as a latte.

What a nice treat! I had wanted to try this for a while after hearing some people liked it better than the “standard” pumpkin pie teas. I am somewhat obsessed with David’s Pumpkin Chai as many of you know, but was still curious about what I was missing. The dry leaf is very attractive with shorter dark tea leaves, orange pumpkin candies, chunks of what appears to be dried squash/pumpkin, and even whole cloves.

The steeped tea is a dark brown clear liquor and I didn’t notice an oil slick inside my cup, but the candies and other goodies do melt a bit into the infuser. The smell is heavenly! My whole kitchen smells like a fresh-baked pumpkin pie with hot chocolate to serve with it.

The taste of this tea is quite a pleasant surprise. Not too sweet, not too mild- it carries with it the actual taste of smooth black tea along with the pumpkin pie spices and a hint of chocolate at the end of the sip. The chocolate is more fragrant than in your face for the taste- it is there, but far from overwhelming the pumpkin pie.

The verdict? Truly, I am still mad about Pumpkin Chai, but this is my favorite closest second so far to any of the seasonal pumpkin-y teas I’ve tried over the years. I really like it and am glad I have more to play with. Next time I might make a milk or eggnog latte and see how it comes out. :)

I am working on some of my older teas and I found this sample package from December that I haven’t even tried. I don’t know why I have put it off for so long as this tea is not bad. It is not something I will be stocking either but I doubt I will struggle getting through the sample. It definitely has the warming fall flavours of pumpkin pie but nothing is particularly distinctive – it is like a slightly spiced black tea with subtle notes of chocolate every now and again. Not bad. Not great. Drinkable.

This one just didn’t do it for me. It’s like it couldn’t commit. Not quite chocolate, not quite pumpkin, not quite pumpkin pie spice. It’s all ALMOST there, but just not enough of any of them. Thin, weak cup. Not for me….

I was quite skeptical of swaps when I first started out on Steepster (over a year ago – wow!). It just didn’t seem safe to give a bunch of strangers my address. And let’s face it, doing so is still not the brightest idea. Yet somehow it has always worked out wonderfully. I’ve swapped with 15+ people and have yet to have a bad experience. Steepster seems to be the one remaining corner of the internet where genuinely nice people gather. Yay for all of you, and a special yay to the creators of this site. Your hard work does not go unnoticed!

This is the third time someone has surprised me with this tea in a swap package. Lucky me! I still really enjoy it. The spicy pumpkin smell of the dry leaf is intoxicating. The brewed tea has a heftier scent. The spice and pumpkin mellow out a bit and an almost bready smell shows up. There’s a slight smokiness in the flavor today. The spice is barely detectable. Instead, there’s almost a pumpkin bread flavor. The aftertaste is nummy nummy pumpkinness. As the brew cools, some sweetness appears at the beginning of the sip. Actually, this is surprisingly good cold! The flavors don’t really change but they stay nicely blended and quite pleasant.

By the way, sipdown!

EDIT: I’m such a goofball! I went on and on about how great my swapping experiences have been and forgot to thank the person who actually sent me the swap. D’oh! Thank you, MissLena, for your thoughtful inclusion of this tea in our swap.

I’m a bit late coming to some of my autumn/winter teas this year. I went a little crazy and over-ordered, I think, and I’m just about beginning to catch up with them now. This is one that languished, unfortunately. Once I found Bluebird’s Spiced Pumpkin Pie, I put all other pumpkin teas on hold. I think that might have been a little unfair.

This one is goooood. I brewed it for about three minutes, and made no additions. The first thing I can taste is pumpkin pie spice, then chocolate, then pumpkin. There is a buttery, pastry-like note lurking around in the background, although it’s subtle. The scent of this one is the truly wonderous thing — it’s so rich and creamy and chocolatey. I have a feeling this would make a good latte, so that’s something I definitely need to try before spring really gets going.

As pumpkin pie teas go, this is a really good one. All of the elements I’d want to taste are there, and the spicing lingers beautifully in the aftertaste. My only sadness here is that I didn’t try this one earlier, on a really cold day. It’s nice now, but it would have been perfect then. Possibly I’ll keep a little back for next year, if I can hold off drinking the rest until then!

Accidentally oversteeped this…I was making colcannon and completely lost track of time.

The bright side is that this tea is bloody delicious, even with my human errors factored in. You don’t get too much of the pumpkin, but there’s a great spicy note and some pastry flavours layered in over a sweetly delightful black base. It tastes amazing hot, even better as it cools…I was hesitant to try this, but I’m so, so glad I did.

I’d happily have more of this in the future. Gleefully, even.