Okay, colour me impressed. This is one from my box o’ teas from LiberTeas from forever ago that I thought I wouldn’t like. It doesn’t have the smell contamination that others do (I finally realized that it is the packaging – the ones in the thicker plastic have no smell contamination but there were some in small sandwich style bags and those ones shared smells. Voila!) but chocolate orange is not a flavour I enjoy. The smell is okay but they just aren’t for me. Another side note: Terry’s now makes a chocolate mint which is fabulous. I bought one as a treat and wish I had more!
Anyway, the aroma of this was very strong and true to the name, I conjured up images of Terry’s Chocolate Oranges right away. Even when steeped both the chocolate and the orange are present, though the orange comes through more as rind at this point.
Apprehensively, I took my first sips. Wow. No bitterness (from the tea or the orange rind) and the chocolate is actually sweeter than expected. I believe it has cacao nibs rather than milk chocolate but there is some sweetness in there that gives more of a milky taste. Accurately it is more of a dark chocolate orange and it is good. Way better than the chocolate.
Speaking of the chocolate, this doesn’t have any nasty artificial taste to it the way many chocolate teas seem to do. This tastes very authentic and natural rather than chemically reconstituted chocolate. Nice!
I continue to be impressed at how smooth this one is. I really expected some bitterness but the base tea on this clearly is quality tea. I thought I may have over-steeped a bit, but it’s holding up well. Very nice! I just checked and am sorry to report that Ovation teas is going out of business…I would manage to finally try their tea after it was too late. If there’s any of this in their closing out sale and you like chocolate orange things, I highly recommend picking some up.
