Marron Chocolat

Happy National Waffle Iron Day! Today the prompt is to drink a tea with flavor notes of a favorite waffle topping! I love putting Nutella on my waffles, and remembered noting before that the flavor of this tea reminded me of Nutella, so I decided to brew up a cup.

This tea is getting quite old now, but the brewed up still has a nice fudgy/nutty aroma. I still dig this. The nutty note tastes a little brassier than I would peg hazelnut, but the flavoring is actually chestnut, which I’ve never had. Mixed with the chocolately note, my brain still gets a strong reminescence of Nutella. I’m also picking up a sort of a cherry sweetness this time around, as well as some honey and cocoa. The tea is really smooth, and I’m used to Lupicia black bases being a bit more on the astringent side.

Very pleasant tea!

Sipdown no. 21 of 2020 (no. 616 total).

Funny, I was thinking about chestnut stands in NYC again when I went to write this note, and I see I mentioned them in my original note.

My original note is pretty accurate in other respects as well except that these last few spoons were more chocolate than chestnut. And paper? Hmm. Yeah, I see what I meant — it’s a sort of very light woodiness that is reminiscent of paper.

What bugs me is that I wish that this was more of what I thought it was going to be. Nuttier, more distinctly chestnut. Part of this may be mental. I was incorrectly translating marron to hazelnut in my head. But it isn’t all mental.

While I’m often a fan of subtlety in tea, I wanted this one to be MORE.

A sample from Miss B. I’m still working my way through the exceptionally generous box she sent me a while back now – it just seems to keep on giving! I used 1 tsp of leaf for today’s cup, and gave it 3.5 minutes in boiling water. It brewed up a nice dark amber, so I added a splash of milk. From the dry leaf, it looks like this one is a mixture of CTC and larger black tea leaves, with generous pieces of chestnut and smaller cacao/chocolate fragments.

To taste, it’s absolutely 100% delicious. The flavour is on the delicate side, but it’s the kind of flavouring that seems like it’s part of the tea and not an addition, so I’ve no complaints about that. It’s lightly nutty, with deeper dark chocolate notes, fairly sweet and creamy, and wonderfully smooth. I couldn’t have wished for better for my first “proper” cup of the morning. It’s deliciously dessert-like without being cloying or overpowering, the perfect “comfort” cup for a cold winter’s day.

This is my favorite chocolate tea.

Oh, this is delicious. I took a while to make this, and so I’m not certain when I say this, but I’m fairly certain it’s from NayLynn. (I checked the notes, and yes, it’s from NayLynn.) I only just started liking the idea of chocolate teas. I realized that I want more of a cocoa flavor in teas than chocolate flavor, mostly because when I drink it, I don’t want it to taste so much like melted chocolate chips, but the bitter flavor of dark chocolate or even like raw cocoa. There’s a flavor here that’s almost like a malt beverage – not that I really know anything about those.

In any case, I think this is closer to what I want in a tea. Not so much the sweet top notes, but the deeper flavor of the cocoa. I wonder how adding cocoa powder to a tea would affect the flavor of a tea as it brews – not to the hot water, but to the tea bag. I want to roughly grind roasted cocoa beans and add them to an assam tea with clove and chile pepper.

I do like this tea. I enjoyed it more than I thought, but I want more of some flavors and less of others. I want less of a dessert tea and more an ode to bitter cocoa.

I’m not usually a chocolate flavored tea gal. I find most teas that have chocolate flavoring added to them end up tasting like watered down hot chocolate, so I wasn’t expecting much when I steeped this. In fact, I was tempted to set it aside for another day, but I’m glad I didn’t. This sample exceeded all of my chocolate tea expectations.

My thought after steeping this was that it smelled and like a mocha. There was a dark cocoa note and an edge to the tea that reminded me of coffee. I added cream and sugar, and… oh my. This turned into a creamy, rich, chocolaty treat with base notes of cocoa and malt. Delicious! I can honestly day I’ve never enjoyed a chocolate tea more.

Thank you, Naylynn for the sample!

This is from the Christmas Card NayLynn sent me. Thank you!

This is a great chocolate tea. The aroma smells so very much like fudge brownies, fresh out of the oven. Taste-wise, it’s not so accurate, and it’s as if something burned…like the very bottom of the brownies having baked too much…but it’s still closer to actual chocolate than other chocolate-flavored teas. If you let the tea sit in your mouth, it begins to resemble dark hot cocoa. Yurmmmm.

Mmmm… Just what I needed this afternoon. I have been a bit heavy handed in my leaf measurement lately but luckily was a bit more careful and it really payed off. (I’m not sure why I was overleafing ) Lovely chocolate flavor with a nice nuttiness. I added a bit of stevia but no milk and it is lovely!

Have a wonderful New Year!

Thank you NayLynn for the sample!

This smelled like wine and chocolate. After steeping it smelled like hot cocoa and coffee beans. 2 1/2 minutes was either far too long or I used far too much leaf. This was really bitter. I tried adding sugar to see if it would level out the bitterness somewhat but no luck. It just turned odd. Thanks for the sample, NayLynn!

This sample came from miss Stephanie, it was part of her free shipping order. I am always excited for the opportunity to try another Lupicia tea! Like some other Lupicia black teas I’ve had, this one looks to be a mix of little CTC-style pellets and more traditional-looking small leaves. There are also some rather large pieces of what I assume to be roasted chestnut. Dry, this tea smells quite delicious – it’s a nice mix of sweet cocoa and roasted, nutty chestnut.

The steeped tea smells remarkably similar to the dry version, yum! The taste is definitely heavier on the chestnut. It has a deep roasted, slightly bitter flavor as well as a creamy nuttiness that contrasts nicely. The cocoa is definitely unsweetened (the same as their Thé au Chocolat). Overall, I quite like this as a fall/winter tea, though I’m sure it would be even better with a touch of sugar added.