Florence

This tea is wonderful anytime. I have been in a real chocolate mood today and thought I would give this tea a sample (Soooooo Glad I did!)
I am very busy and I do not have time to relog praise for one of the best chocolate teas I have had so far on my journey of discovery of teas.
Just like my friends here…..This tea truly rocks!

The Search for a New Dawn continues today: One of the first things I did after bemoaning the evil fate that had befallen one of my two favorite breakfast companions (Dawn tea) was to check on Steepster for a set of teas to try to replace my favorite morning cup. I quickly came upon this one which looked promising. I love chocolate and hoped this would be a good Dawn replacement. Since it received rave reviews here, I ordered it and a few other Harney tea possibilities.

It smells more of hazelnuts than of chocolate in the envelope but once I brew it the fragrance changes to a more complex meld of scents that include nuts, chocolate, sweet tea, and some undefineable sweet note. Chocolate is among the fragrances but it is a softer chocolate than what I think of when I think of chocolate. (I like the darkest of chocolates so that is my benchmark.) The smell is pleasant.

The taste is better. There is a slight bitter edge that adds to the rich feel of chocolate in the tea and it combines nicely with the nuttiness and tea. It is more of an afternoon tea in my opinion since the flavors are a bit too rich and demanding for the morning and would do best with time to sip and a bit of bread or croissant to have along with the tea, but I’m happy with it today since today is the one day we don’t go for our run in the morning. I can’t really see quaffing this tea to get my pre-run caffeine and then haring off. However, it would work marvelously as a post-run treat after one of our long weekend runs, especially in the fall and winter or as a treat prior to going to the theater.

Will I buy it and add it to my unmanageably huge supply of flavored teas? Yes. I will.

Update: Out of curiosity I added a scant bit of creamed cinnamon honey made by a local woman to the tea. I just had the feeling it would work well and it does. It transforms the tea from a delightful chocolate treat to a wonderfully complex dessert. Now if I only had a croissant to go with the tea.

Holy crap this tea really delivers. Smells of wonderful sweet chocolate, and then the flavor is in fact rich, creamy chocolate and toasted hazelnut! Tastes like a Rocher candy without the crunch. Actually, what it reminds me a lot of is those rectangular tins of International Coffee, you know, the sweet powdered “coffee” stuff I used to drink in the ‘80s as a kid thinking I was being all fancy and grown up. That rich, and that guilty pleasure (so sweet, so creamy!) satisfying. Love how much hazelnut’s in this. Woah.

A tea that doesn’t ask much of you (you don’t have to set aside any concentration to enjoy this), that just offers sweet, straightforward pleasure. (I’m also getting the impression it’d be hard to make this tea taste bitter—it’s smooth, smooth, smooth and the tea element is very light, somehow without the whole thing tasting watery. Tastes, yeah, more like a sweet faux coffee or hot cocoa than tea.) I haven’t added milk yet because there’s not even a hint of bitterness and because it’s so creamy already, but I reckon it’d taste just dandy should you choose to do so.

And it resteeps well! Love. Kinda feel like a tea noob/poser for so loving a tea that, um, doesn’t taste like tea, but there it is. Yum.

Oh God the smell of this! I love the smell of chocolate so much. This is lovely. At first I thought it was a combo of chocolate and mint (strangely enough), the hazelnut isn’t roasted so I had trouble picking it up. After enjoying a mug full of this tea, though, I can safely say this is a match made in heaven. The sweet hazelnut complements the deep aroma of the chocolate so well and the chocolate lingers on your tongue long after a sip. I still don’t like chocolate but boy does it work well in teas. I enjoyed this best without milk and piping hot. What a treat! Thank you Jackie for this gift.

This is definitely a tea meant to be sipped and savored. It’s very smooth and has an almost silky mouthfeel. (Hehe I used the word “mouthfeel” for the first time in a post! I love that word.) I adore the chocolate and hazelnut combination. These flavors do not mask or overpower the black tea, they are all there, and are quite merry together.

Thank you Liberteas for sending me this sample!

Ohhh soooo good!!!! It reminds me of Nutella but can definitely taste TEA! Flavored to perfection! Great balance of flavors and tea! I think I am going to go make another cup, I am seeing the bottom of this teacup way to fast :)

Man, I need to remember that Harney rocks the flavored teas! I usually stay away from chocolate-flavored teas in particular, because they’re never chocolatey enough or don’t blend well or both. Florence is a definitely exception. Florence is delicious. (On its own, or with a bit of milk – definitely no sugar needed).

The hazelnut and chocolate both come through very well, in the aroma _and_flavor of the liqueur. The dry leaves are very strongly scented, so you might was an isolated spot to store this one. This is probably as good as their vanilla-flavored tea, but I’m bumping the rating a little because anyone can make vanilla tea taste good. But blending chocolate well? Way more impressive.

P.S. This is a sample from JacquelineM, so I will definitely be adding some to my next order from Harney. I suspect it would be delicious iced as well.

ETA: The second steep was good too! Again, very impressed. Most (artificially) flavored teas lose their flavor after the first; I added another 8oz boiling water, left it alone for ~10 minutes, and came back to a mild but still sweetly flavored cup.

I smell cocoa. I’m brewing this tea and it actually smells like cocoa. If I put my nose a little closer to the cup, I also get hazelnut. My first taste was of cocoa, hazelnuts and black tea. I’m drinking it w/o milk or sugar. Right now I’m thinking how happy I am for buying a whole tin of this instead of a sample. This tea just tastes wonderful. The reviews on this tea convinced me to try it. I’m very glad that I did.

I finally got to try this thanks to Jacqueline!!!! I was ‘thinking’ Hazelnut and when I sipped it I was like YEAH, Hazelnut…but it tastes like Chocolate, too…well, duh, that’s because there is chocolate in it! LOL The nutty and chocolaty couldn’t be blended together more perfectly. YUM.

Thank you so much to Amy Oh for sending me a sample of this and H&S Paris blend!

I was bound to find a tea that I truly disliked eventually, though I would never have thought that this would be it. The actual taste of the tea, in truth, is not that bad for me. Not that good, but also not that bad. The problem is that I have to smell the dry leaves, then the brewing leaves, then the cup when it’s poured, every time I take a sip, and all the way through the cleaning of the pot, and the swell is just way way way too sweet in a way that doesn’t do it for me. This is the first chocolatey tea I’ve tried, and I think I can say that chocolate teas aren’t going to be my friends, but I can’t confirm that until I’ve tried more.

I have been daydreaming about this tea ever since the lovely Jenn sent me a sample a little while ago. Thank you, Jenn for fueling my addiction, hee hee. I had to buy a tin of it.

This is a yummy flavored tea. I am not usually much of a fan of chocolate in tea but here it works somehow. The hazelnut is definitely there as well, perhaps it’s the combination of the two that works for me. I see a lot of tea that claims to be nut flavored but the nut hardly comes through at all. I have no idea if people drink this kind of tea in Italy but who cares! ha! It is lovely here in San Francisco and taking the chill out of my November morning.

This tea also need to be tried with rum in it or maybe brandy! woo!

I ordered a sample of this with my order from Harney & Sons and I’ve been dying to try it. I was worried that the tea flavor would overpower the chocolate and hazelnut flavors that I really wanted to taste but I shouldn’t have worried. This tea is magically awesome. Like Tagoti said, I don’t think I’d want to drink it every day, as it is pretty rich, but it is a great treat.

The chocolate and the hazelnut flavors are clearly present as well as a smidge of a coffee-like flavor. The chocolate and hazelnut flavors take turns leading the show which makes for a fun and complex cup of tea. There is no bitterness at all. It’s a very smooth cup.

I had such high expectations for this tea. Chocolate and hazelnut, yummy! I was thinking Nutella tea! yay. And it has pretty good reviews.

The first few sips just taste like an unflavored black tea. Then it started tasting like an artificial black tea. As it cools down, the nutty flavor comes out, but not in a good way. There is something in the background that could possibly pass as chocolate if I concentrate well enough on it.

Not as exiting as I had hoped it would be. But thank you for letting me try it out cheetah_pita!

I am so glad to finally drink a Harney & Sons tea that doesn’t make me want to immediately place another order.

It’s not that this one was bad, though. It was a lovely blend, I did enjoy my cup, but I found that the delicious chocolate / hazelnut flavor that I was looking for didn’t really show up until after the sip. Then, it felt like I’d just eaten a spoonful of Nutella.

Very good, but I wish I could taste that while I’m actually drinking it.

Why did I wait so long before ripping into the samples that Ashley sent to me? I was inspired by my Italian High Rennisance art history class, so I decided to try this one first. I brewed my small two cup pot and sat down with my copy of Beowulf to go with the tea.

The tea brewed up to a nice light honey color. At first, I wasn’t sure what I was tasting because it didn’t taste as strong as the teas I am used to. The flavor is very light. Once I relaxed I tasted the hazelnut. Light, nutty, slightly bitter and sweet at the same time. Then a small hint of chocolate drifted in with the black tea. Then I was getting a nice cream taste with all of the other flavors even though there was no cream in it. By the time I had finished my first cup I learned how to taste my tea.

I sweetened the second cup with a little bit of honey because I wanted that rich dessert taste. The honey brought out the chocolate more and the whole cup smoothed over. I was going to ask my roommate if she wanted a taste, but I wanted to drink this all on my own. The flavors are very balanced and I enjoyed every drop.

My only regret is that I only brought half of my samples to school with me. Granted, I did that on the request of my boyfriend so he can share a pot of each flavor with me when I get home, but I still wish I had brought it all for myself. Now I know what a high quality flavored tea is like.

Breakfast with the family back in Texas today. I don’t normally drink this as a breakfast tea but it’d what I wanted this morning. I took it black and drank it along side my banana smoothie. They went very well together. I think the subtle chocolate and hazelnut taste of this tea would go well with anything creamy.

Smells strongly of chocolate. I’m not so much a chocolate tea person, but this sounded appealing for a tasting swap. :)

This is a lovely blend. The hazelnut softens the chocolate, which I generally think is harsh in teas, and the other flavors don’t cover up the tea. I believe I’ll have to order some of this with my next Harney order.

What in the hey? I could have sworn I brewed a cup of tea… but this tastes like chocolate, and GOOD chocolate at that! Oh so good.

Perfect after work tea. Now it’s time for sleep!

Got a cup of this to go from HarneySoho today. I have never had it before but I am pleasantly surprised! I didn’t think I would like a tea that has a chocolate base, but it is oddly refreshing. I am not sure I will buy it to have in my cabinet, however, it was a very nice pick-me up this afternoon.

Hmm….I must say this tea is interesting. It really reminds me of a coffee which is a good thing I suppose since I am a reformed coffee addict. It has a bitterness from the hazelnut that can become a bit too much when brewed for the entire 5 minutes so I prefer this one at 4 if drinking plain, but 5 is fine if adding milk. The first cup of this I drank was okay, but not as impressive as I expected from all the rave reviews. I have found myself wanting this tea several times in the last few days, however. Maybe it is starting to grow on me….