Orange Chocolate Green Tea

This smells heavenly dry. I thought it might be a little tricky to steep it strong enough to get the chocolate without bitter-izing the green, especially with hot water out of McDonald’s tap, but it balanced out nicely. Extremely tasty—I’ll hunt this one down again.

Jillian sent me a few bags of this tea to try, since I’ve been drooling over her tasting notes about it. Thanks, Jillian!

This smells incredible! The scent is nearly identical to the chocolate oranges that are sold around the holidays. And I daresay I’ll have to pick up one soon…this smell could cause a craving!

The chocolate is not as strong when it comes to taste, though. It’s a very subtle chocolate taste. Orange definitely dominates, and the green tea is rather good. Actually, the taste of this reminds me of a white chocolate orange candy bar that I had when I was in England…the British chap I was semi-dating would bring me random chocolates/candies that he thought I should try. I remember him handing this bar to me and thinking “who puts orange in white chocolate”. Aw, I haven’t thought of that in ages. Wish I knew the name of that candy bar, too.

I won’t say that this is the best orange chocolate tea out there, and if you’re looking for milk chocolate taste, I’d look elsewhere. But if you look at it as a white chocolate orange, the taste is much more accurate. And I quite like it.

It is Green Tea Tuesday around here – Dragonwell, Hojicha and Genmaicha. Time to get some flavored greens in the mix!

I found one individually wrapped bag of this and realized that I’ve been hanging on to it for 5 months now. I picked it (along with a few other of Revolution’s individually wrapped teabags) up from a gas station between seeing my family and driving 5 hours north to see the husband’s family.

In an effort to continue today’s green tea consumption I made this. Dry bag smells mostly like a minty green tea – strange. No where on the packaging does it say “Mint”. But I push forward. Brewed at the below parameters with 8 oz of water, all I taste is a slightly minty green tea. There’s no chocolate; no orange in my cup. Oh, the disappointment… Revolution you lured me with the orange and chocolate left me hanging with a green mint. :(

I’ve discovered that Pilot truck stops are one of the few gas stations (the only one I’ve found, really) to offer non-Lipton tea bags. When I’m on the road I sometimes want a little caffeine boost from a tea, and while I’m not expecting much, it’s pleasant to find pyramid sachets of tea. They actually have a variety of sachets, and I picked up a handful of them on my recent road trip, not for drinking on the road but for trying out later (who has the control over steeping parameters to brew a white tea on the road?). Who knows how old these are, since I don’t know what kind of tea turnover a truck stop in western Maryland has, but I thought I’d give it a go.

Anyway, this was one I grabbed because, orange chocolate, right? I love those flavors together. Dry, the sachet smells like green tea and ginger with a hint of orange, and those flavors pretty much bear out in the brewed tea. I brewed it for a bit longer than it said on the packet because of suggestions on Steepster, but still it’s primarily a very light green tea with some ginger notes (not very strong, but there). As it cools I get maybe a little orange, but no chocolate. Oh well. Disappointing, but then again, I bought it at a truck stop!

On occasion, I’m moved to buy things because the planets have aligned.

Let me explain. I like to look at items on sale, but I don’t convince myself to buy them merely because they’re on sale. I only buy them, generally, if they’re something I can (and will) actually use.

On rare occasion, I’ll make an exception…such as when I find something that looks as though it really shouldn’t exist. At all. Because I’m in such disbelief, I’ll laughingly buy it.

This tea was an intersection of those two habits. Look at the name: Orange Chocolate Green Tea. Any two of those things sound like they’d go well together, yes? BUT NOT ALL THREE. THREE IS RIGHT OUT.

Except…it’s…not bad! Not great, either. It’s kind of like when you’ve got a dessert sampler platter and you’ve eaten the delightful morsels it once held…and you’re surreptitiously trying to get those last little crumbs of everything up because it would be a shame to waste it. Everything sort of gets mashed together on your fork, but because you were familiar with the distinct flavours of each thing beforehand, you don’t mind it as much as you otherwise might.

It’s…a curiositea. Yes.

I look at the box and it says that the tea is orange chocolate-flavoured, but the smell and taste I’m getting from this tea is neither of those things to me. Instead it’s almost spicy with green, grassy notes. Actually I can pick up a little bit of citrus, but it’s not what I’d called readily distinguishable. And where the heck is the chocolate?! I want my chocolate fix dammit!

Maybe I need to work on the steeping parameters a bit, so my rating may be subject to change.

I have to be blatantly honest and say that I don’t usually like green tea, except that my brother has been on me lately to start drinking it because it’s supposedly so good for you. I stumbled across this while I was on the hunt for groceries and thought I might give it a try. After all, chocolate is definitely a good incentive to get me to drink something.

But I have to admit, I don’t really taste the chocolate in this tea. I can smell it faintly in the dry mix, but that’s it. Surprisingly, I actually like this tea despite that fact. I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s the combination of the citrus with the green tea that makes it easier for me to drink. But don’t let that fool you into thinking I’m only tolerating the flavor. It’s a soothing fix in the middle of the work day when I just need an easy pick-me-up and my other teas will take too long to brew.

I’ll have to go somewhere else for my chocolate fix though. Sad day. =(

I was hesitant to try this since I’ve tried “chocoate” flavored teas before and did not like them. This one was pretty good though. I actually didn’t taste chocolate in it, but that helped me like the tea.