Hot Choc

Strange VariaTEA TTB: Tea #13

Only have a few more teas from the box to sip through and then I’ll be ready to start organizing a shipping list for this one – super exciting!

I don’t normally love chocolate teas, as I’ve sad time and time again, but it’s hard to get access to blends from T2 here in Canada so I took the opportunity to try this one. It starts pretty fine and tasty on the palate: rich chocolate with a little bit of a roasty undertone. There’s something very unpleasant to the finishing note though. I’m struggling to think of how to describe it, but it’s sort of simultaneously like breathing in a bunch of dust but also just, like, eating a packet of sugar. Really not great – I didn’t finish the mug because it threw me off that much…

Sample from VariaTEA – second time i’m having this. It’s not a bad cacao tea but anytime these things call themselves “hot chocolate” i just laugh because the brew is always too watery to really make me feel like hot chocolate. And if i wanted hot chocolate, i’d probably just make some for real :) But this was tasty and enjoyable nonethless :)

More teaware arrived from DAVIDsTEA today and my Black Friday order from Happy Turtle Teas. That got me excited to get into some new things. I wanted a latte and the T2 teas that arrived earlier this week were in large quantities and definitely latte flavors. This is a little thin so I could see it benefiting from a bit of whipped cream and chocolate drizzle. Other than that, it’s not bad.

Very chocolately – no wonder given the ingredients! It really helps with a chocolate kick if I’m fasting and am craving chocolate.

Holiday Tea-son! I got a discounted holiday tea sampler pack in an after Christmas sale from T2 last January, and this was one of them. Figured I’d enjoy a cup while waiting for my pizza to show up. Tonight is going to be a Netflix and Chill sort of night.

This is a nice chocolately tea, and usually I find chocolate teas either a bit weak on the flavor or the mouthfeel seems a bit strange to me if I don’t make them as a latte. I’m actually really liking this one, because the chocolate flavor is actually very rich, but also because something about the flavor is reminding me of a chocolate liquour, so the mouthfeel of the tea is working for me even without adding milk. The tea isn’t super sweet, with some deeper dark cocoa notes, and just a touch of nice bittersweet dark chocolate to its flavor, but there is also a subtle underlying sweetness from the blackberry leaf that I’m finding very pleasant, and that berry note really works, as well; it makes me think of those speciality dark chocolates that have fruity flavor notes to them. I really do seem to taste a sort of dry, alcoholic liquor sort of flavor in the aftertaste on my tongue, and a slight astringency which may be from the black tea; I don’t really taste the black tea as far as a flavor, but I can tell it is here from the qualities of the drink.

I am sort of digging this. While I like this exactly as is, which I really can’t say for many chocolately teas, I do still want to try this latte-style and see how creamy milk will change up the game. Likely it will be more cocoa-like and less liquor-like, but I’m hoping it will still retain more of the dark chocolate elements rather than becoming milk-chocolately. I’m very curious to try it out!