Bought a sample of this on takgoti’s recommendation. First of all, wow. The dry leaves are incredibly long and dark. These are the biggest black tea leaves I have ever seen (although admittedly, I have not seen very much). The leaves smell so strongly of chocolate, caramel, and coconut that I can hardly believe these are not flavored. In fact, they smell very similar to the coconutty-Chocolate Cream Truffles tea by Portsmouth that I had a few days ago.
So, I’m scooping in a teaspoon into my Zarafina. The leaves are long and twisty, so it’s hard to tell if I really have a full teaspoon of tea in there. Oh well. Setting the Zarafina to Black and Strong for the first run.
The smell of the liquor is more like honey than chocolate, to me, but maybe I just didn’t rinse my cup out enough. I just downed this cup in less than a minute because it was so good. I’m not quite at the level yet where I can pick out all the different flavors in a tea. I tastes honey and roasted yams (?). Or maybe honey roasted yams. Hard to say. It was good though. Really, really good.
Second cup: While pouring this into a cup, I could strongly smell chocolate. And now that I’m sipping, I can definitely taste it as well. Oh, heaven. Here we go. Definitely getting coconut and chocolate, similar to the tea I mentioned earlier, and maybe a little caramel. Now that I’m looking at the liquor, it seems quite a bit darker than the first cup. Adding a tiny bit of sweetener.
Sorry, got sidetracked. Found my kitty unapologetically eating my dinner. >:o
Ah, caramel, there you are! On cup three, added a little more sweetener. Okay, this honestly tastes like a chocolate-caramel candy bar. I am so glad I tried this. I was an awesome introduction to non-flavored black teas.
Editing to add that I let the 4th resteep cool down, and it was even more chocolate-caramelly, and a bit sweeter as well.
