Almond Truffle

A surprise holiday sample from Sil! Even the thought of this tea makes my mouth water, so I gave in and allowed myself a cup last night. It’s pretty good. Definitely more truffle/chocolate than almond, but I can detect a smidge of almond flavour as it starts to cool. The chocolate is dark, with a dry, cocoa-like finish. It really is reminiscent of eating a truffle! My only real sadness is that the almond is a little hard to find. It is there, but it’s buried pretty deep under the chocolate and black tea flavours. The black tea is a little astringent, but nothing terrible. I enjoyed this more than I’ve enjoyed most dessert-type teas in a while — perfect for early evening sipping!

Notes of earthy dark chocolate + faint almond scent on a black tea base. The aroma is amazing when steeped, but I find the flavour of the liquor itself lacking, until I add milk to it. Pretty tins, could get addictive collecting these tins!

Sipdown! 105/365!

Another one from Sil! ;)

One thing I’m finding very interesting about going through the second half of samples 4-6 years later is how, for the most part, my thoughts about a tea are very consistent. For example, this tea. I got a bit of chocolate and nut, but for the most part, it just tasted like a black tea. A decent one, sure, but nothing special. I figured this could be related to age – and then read my previous tasting note, from 4 years ago, where I said very much the same thing. So in 4 years, very little has actually changed. There are, of course, exceptions when ingredients have gone off, and a couple palate adjustments that have happened, but not too many. Anyhow, this is bringing me unexpected entertainment, but is not helpful in motivating me to actually finish everything off…

Overleafed this tea a bit, but I got such an influx of tea yesterday that I’m trying to sip down what I’ve already got. Also realized that I don’t have much in the way of black caramel teas, and I’ve realized that’s a variety I want to stock.

This wasn’t so bad, even with the overleafing. A tad astringent, but I added some honey to balance it out. I have enough for 1 or 2 cups, I think.

Anyways, do you want to know something cool? I took the buckwheat grains from last night’s sobacha and saved them in the fridge overnight so that I could have them for breakfast this morning. They turned out not so bad! I stirred in a small cup of fruit yogurt and had that as breakfast. So I feel very ingenious.

Had for breakfast this morning – this was a sample from a long time ago swap with Sil!

My stomach is finally starting to remember how this whole digestion process works. It’s been touch and go for a few days and not much of anything (even tea) sounded appetizing.

This morning since things seemed better I went for a tea I hadn’t tried before (just in case it still doesn’t sit well I didn’t want to have a negative association with my favorite teas – as it is I can now no longer look at a box of Girl Scout cookies without feeling sick. ALL THE SADS.)

Steeped at the recommended parameters by the Sloane company. They have such gorgeous tins, really. If I didn’t have a surplus of them I would totally buy some – so pretty and elegant.

Taste wise I just added creamer from the beginning. Once it steeped up it looked too dark to drink on its own – and the smell was mostly dark chocolate. Dry leaf smell is contaminated from being in a drawer with a lot of other samples, unfortunately, but once steeped I got only unsweetened dark chocolate where I was hoping for some nuttiness too.

This took more creamer than I normally use to be palatable, so I’m guess it would have been really bitter and astringent without that buffer. Almond does that in tea (nuts in general add astringence in my experience) but I’m really not picking up on any almond at the beginning. Just….chocolate. And being a vanilla girl, this is not doing much for me.

Eh. At the end of the cup when things have cooled down marzipan takes over. Sweet and almondy – where were you from the beginning??? I like that eventually it lived up to its name but I ultimately think it took too long in getting to that point. Good to try, but I’m glad I just had a sample of it.

Here’s my tea of the morning and thanks to Indigobloom for the sample. I was expecting to be a bit underwhelmed because I don’t find too many chocolate teas that seem worthy of accolades.

I was wondering if I steeped this for too long (5 minutes) but really wanted to coax the flavors out more. The brewed tea smells like chocolate liquor but the flavor is really light. I get the cocoa noted but the almond is even a bit more difficult to detect. It was better with soymilk and rock sugar. Darn you, chocolate teas, for giving me a sense of false hope. ;-)