So, normally a rose/chocolate blend wouldn’t interest me anymore; I find the pairing relatively overdone – but the addition of bergamot kind of piqued my interest a little bit, so when I was in store I took the chance to smell it before ruling out grabbing a sample of it, and since I couldn’t smell the rose – just chocolate and bergamot, I figured grabbing a tiny sample wouldn’t kill me.
Now I’ve made it at home, and I have to admit I had a somewhat weird experience with it. I opened up my sample bag to measure my leaf and I was hit with a really overwhelmingly sweet smell and, I kid you not, my first reaction without even thinking was “Huh, eggnog”. What!? There’s like nothing in this blend that makes any sense as ‘eggnog’. Brain, what’s wrong with you? Anyway – it did smell good though, if not strangely holiday-like.
After my cup was steeped it definitely didn’t smell like eggnog any more though – rest assured. I did make a few observations very quickly though after taking my first baby sips: 1. This is really, really oily. Seriously, the oil slick and little scummy beads at the top of my mug from the little chocolate shavings were easily as bad as the infamously goopy White Chocolate Frost from last Christmas. Secondly, it brewed up a strangely light colour. Visually, it kind of bordered on a darker green tea for me. Super strange.
I decided that I was going to add a little bit of milk to this one; I’ve found in the past with WCF that it makes the oil/chocolate goop less noticeable. With milk, I thought this was really pleasant and soothing. It definitely had a rich bergamot flavour that tasted fresh but not too heavy handed, and the rose blended with it fairly seamlessly, I thought. You could taste it; but it wasn’t like a stand alone bouquet of flowers shoved into your mouth-hole. More so, it was like with EG blends use lavender; kind of there to add depth but totally not the star. I don’t know how I felt about the chocolate; it was sort of artificial. I used to really enjoy DT’s chocolate blends but just…
Well, not so much anymore.
Overall this was nice; very appropriate as a Valentine’s blend and I appreciate that DT did something a little bit different for their V-Day blend. I think I’ll enjoy finishing off my sample but since I don’t reach for EG that often anyway and it didn’t blow my mind I know I wont be picking any more up.
Also; I really should not be writing tasting notes AND cooking. My food has boiled over on me twice now because I haven’t been paying attention to the stove…
