Moving right along in my deep wade through my “everything with the word chocolate in it” buying spree of yestermonth, we come to this Teavana offering. I’m most excited by the fact that this has neither rooibos nor honeybush in it. I am trying to recall whether I’ve had an herbal chocolate blend that didn’t have rooibos or honeybush. Yeah, I think there was a TeaFrog sample of a tisane with chicory in it, but that’s all I can recall.
It’s got fruit in it (apple and strawberry) but the fruit morsels are surprisingly tiny in their chunkiness compared to the usual Teavana fruit blend. The smell of the dry mix reminds me of what I’ve smelled when I’ve stuck my nose into a Halloween bag after trick or treating. A lot of different sweet smells all mixed together, with chocolate and fruit among them. Oh, and there’s spice, too. A pretty strong spicy note, which fits right in with the Halloween theme as it takes up the banner of red hots and their ilk. Spicy sweet, but not cinnamony.
The infusion is the color of apple juice, the dark, no sugar added kind, and cloudy. It has a less intense version of that generic candy aroma from the dry mixture.
Now here’s the really weird part. As I started to sip this, I realized why I made the association with Halloween. Candy corn! Yeah, strangely, that’s what I taste. More of a corn syrup flavor than anything else. Maybe a tiny bit of cocoa, and some sweetness from the strawberry, but put it all together and I get candy corn.
The first time I made this it was pretty weak. I was able to strong it up a bit, but it didn’t change the candy corn note. The spice isn’t enough to make an impression.
Candy corn is ok, but I don’t really care for it in my tea. Fortunately it takes so much of this to make an infusion that is strong enough to have flavor, I only have about a cup’s worth left.
