Mélange de Chamonix (TE94)

mmm another revisit to my upton samples. Today is a good day. Still freaked out with all the things i have to do for the trip – especially if i don’t want my other projects to suffer BUT disney announced the other half of their 2014 itineraries AND i finally have my currency in hand. yeah..simple things satisfy me. This tea however? meh. I’m over it lol. It’s not a bad tea but i don’t feel the need to purchase it again or sing it’s praises :) It’s not a bad tea, and i’d drink it again..but i almost feel like it needs to be blended with something to make it really POP!

For the life of me, I’m blanking out why I bought so much of this. Somewhere, someone must have told me this was the end-all, be-all of chocolate teas.

Smells carob-like and fresh out of the bag, but more cocoa-like as it steeps. Sweetened, this is an excellent fix for my love of hot cocoa, even though it’s got zero of the creaminess that cocoa with milk does. It’s more.. thick. A teensy bit of cinnamon in the aftertaste. Mostly lightly flavored, dark cocoa nibs. It’s a strong like, but not a love. I think this would really sparkle with some orange in it, or as Sil said in another tealog, mixed with something else.

I really wanted to like this. It smelled so good in the pouch, had so many ingredients that I love…

Turns out, put together, they just become a busy mess. What flavor there is is quite confused; the closest I can compare it to is a badly done german gingerbread-dipped-in-german-chocolate cookie, but one that is old enough that most of the flavor has faded.

I sometimes add a bit of Assam along with it. Towards the end of the package I sometimes need to supplement with additional cardamon pods. A great favorite. I brew it with sugar in the pot and add milk generously.

Not a bad chocolate tea. I had four times in the past three days because ’Tis the season . I can taste the hazelnut flavoring, cinnamon, and cardamon (strongest to weakest), but the malty Assam base can easily overshadow these notes. This tasted best with a little less leaf and slightly lower water temperature than suggested, just so I could enjoy the non-tea ingredients.

Tastes alright grandpa-style , but wouldn’t do it again:

https://www.instagram.com/p/xNJBcwNn/

The luscious scent of this tea never ceases to amaze me. My current batch seems a bit weak in flavor in comparison with the previous one, but it’s still highly recommended!

This one came in the vast amounts of samples that MissB shared with me in order to take advantage of already paid for shipping weight when she supplied me with some Sleepytime Vanilla. I gave Husband a choice of two different samples and he chose this one that neither of us knew what was. I don’t speak any French and I think he’s got a little, but it didn’t suffice to translate the name of the blend further than ‘blend of dot-dot-dot’.

Turns out it’s a chai-ish thing with cardamom, cinnamon and cocoa. Probably not super-suitable for this part of the day then. Oh nevermind.

Chai and chai-ish blends are my one concession to the principle that any tea that requires additives in order to shine is not a good tea, because slightly milked is part of the very definition of chai, and so this is how we had it.

To me it tasted mostly like cardamom and with a cardboard-y Assam-y aftertaste. I couldn’t really pick up any cinnamon at all. The cocoa was also evident but in a funny way seemed to attach itself more to the milk than anything else. It felt like a cardamom blend with slightly cocoa-y milk added to it. I would not have thought that it was even possible to have such an experience, but apparently it is.

I thought it was quite nice. A chai light, nearly, since it didn’t have the large selection of spice in it that most chais have. I believe this is part of why it’s difficult for me to be interested in chai. There is too much going on and it sometimes testes like something that should be in food rather than drink. The fact that this had just a couple made it easier for me to fully enjoy it.

Husband is also not super-keen on chai in general, but he reported that he thought this one was very delicious and seemed to be a little disappointed that we only had a sample. He couldn’t put his finger on exactly why this one appealed to him so much though.

I’m thinking it should be worth a try to add a few cardamom pods (we always have some of those) next time I’m steeping an Assam for him and see how he takes to that.

I decided to try this tea to experience cocoa and cardamon notes in a tea. When the tea was steeping I noted a strong chocolate mint aroma—very pleasant. I was excited for the first sip. I steeped it for 5 minutes with 212 water as recommended by upton. Upon tasting the tea I noted a slight cocoa flavor and some fruity/cinnamon notes. Nothing especially exciting to me—it reminded me of a christmas chocolate—one of those berry flavored cream filled types that make you wish you weren’t in the company of others so you could spit it out.
The tea loses much with the addition of milk and sugar.
Its not awful, but not worth bothering to order online.