JavaVana Mate

Seriously, where have you been all my life JavaVana. Just the name itself is fun.

Soo good. Especially since I use to be a crazy coffee drinker, this is the perfect blend for me. Everything mixes perfectly together.

Thanks Meghann for this one also. You have just made my day!

One from the sample bin for my morning tea. This comes courtesy of Ottawa Tea. Thank you for your generosity! I do like getting samples from Teavana. Maybe one day I will find one that is good enough for me venture into their store. (I am not a fan of mall shopping, and really am not looking forward to a hard sell atmosphere, or even the possibility of one.)

This is pretty good, though. Definitely a coffee drinker’s tea. It is a smooth blend of Assam and Mate…two things that I usually don’t like on their own. I get a little of the cocoa, and vanilla, but I am also getting a touch of cinnamon. If I ever do go, I will probably pick some of this up.

This is a happy tea. Happy, creamy, yummy, chocolaty, strong, smooth mate and black tea blend. It is an experience. I needed something like this this morning when I woke up way to early to realize that I had some work to catch up on. Thankfully, the internet exists, and through some magic programming I was able to work in my bed with a hot cup of tea curled up with my dog. Ok… When I put it that way, it actually doesn’t sound miserable at all!

The description of it as Mate is a bit misleading, as I make out a lot more black tea than roasted Mate. But, in all fairness, the roasted Mate is there and you can find it if you look for it! It smells amazing. It really is a happy smell to me. A nice mix of chocolate and vanilla backed up with tea. Yum…

I brewed 2 teaspoons to 12oz so that it would be a strong and tasty companion through my work on Sunday morning. It smell remained consistent as you I brewed. Filling my kitchen with chocolaty goodness. Sadly, no one was awake to comment on how good my tea made the kitchen smell… My dog had no comments… Still love her though!

The brew was a burgundy brown. I added a teaspoon of brown sugar. It is really good. It tastes just like it smells, and in this case, that is a good thing! The chocolate vanilla notes still stand out and you can taste tea in the background. It is like sipping liquid dark chocolate brownies with a roasty tea flavor to accompany it.

I really enjoy this tea. It always manages to cheer me up and be the right choice when I need something sweet and strong to make it through the day (or just because!).

I ended up finishing all of my work, and having extra cuddle time with my sleepy lovely dog! Wasn’t that terrible a Sunday morning after all! : )

I borrowed this from a friend who has a big Teavana collection (and somehow seeing another’s tea collection in person makes me feel better about my own).

I picked it up because I’m a fan of Teavana’s MateVana. This isn’t bad, but it’s not great. I think they tried to make it taste TOO much like coffee, and at times it tastes artificial. This is discontinued, so I guess I should be glad I don’t like it too much, right? In fact, going through her collection, I realized Teavana has a lot of discontinued teas. That bites if you find something you like…

The smell of this tea is awesome… think chocolate mocha!!!! YUMMY… it tastes like a mocha with a touch of vanilla. I really enjoyed a cup of this and it gave me ALOT of energy to get my housework done (ok, some of it done ;)

I needed this tea this morning because I just could not wake up today to save my life! When I finally did muster up the strength to get up out of bed, I stumbled in the kitchen and made myself a cup with my eyes half closed.

The smell of the dry tea is so good. It smells like mocha coffee with cream. One of the things I love about this tea is the dark color it produces. Looks like coffee, smells like coffee…must be a good substitute…

It doesn’t taste quite like it smells. It’s good, don’t get me wrong, but it’s a little weaker than I expected. I can detect some spice from this tea. I’m not sure where the vanilla is…

Overall this is a good morning cup. With a little milk and sugar it’s very good. I’m enjoying it.

The smell of this tea was so intoxicating I had to go for a cup of this today.

Normally if I’m bagged at work I’ll get a cup of iced coffee, but I think this might be my replacement. I tend to be a fan of flavoured coffees (like vanilla especially) so this tea is a perfect “coffee” replacement for me.

I especially love that there is black tea blended in with this to give it a fuller body. Mate alone probably wouldn’t lend itself enough flavour.

I normally don’t like chocolate in tea, but balanced with the vanilla and caramely notes it works well.

Definetly my new go-to cup when I really need a blast of caffeine. Yum!

Just a note: I drank this with just a slight touch of sweetener.

I expected a lot from this blend. I pick up the chocolate and a sweet, medicinal syrup flavor. If I didn’t know better I’d swear I was drinking chocolate flavored cough syrup. I missed the vanilla entirely. Maybe roasted mate isn’t for me. This particular tea is definitely not for me. My finance took it in to work and gave it to a co-worker who loves it.

Holy mocha aroma Batman…just the smell of this mate tea woke me up! The first taste was a touch on the bitter side so I added a touch more sugar and a little half and half (took me back to my coffee drinking days). The taste is very much cocoa and mocha. I’m not really getting the vanilla flavor while drinking. That vanilla flavor seems to be what I’m left with after….not bad. I might try mixing this up with the Wild Orange Blossom herbal from Teavana and see what that’s like.

Many thanks to Will Work For Tea for this sample! Super pumped to try my first Teavana tea!

More mate! Every morning for the last while I’ve been loading up on mate tea. So far I haven’t been hanging off the ceiling or running laps with my rabbit. However, it does keep me awake – this morning I’m looking forward to this cup as I had a crappy sleep. I have a broken finger from brazilian jiu-jitsu that got aggravated yesterday.

DRY: Coffee.. yep, coffee. Like already brewed wonderful coffee, not that pungent bean coffee. Hints of chocolate, oh yeah!

STEEPED: Mocha smell. Brews up to a dark brown.

TASTE: I can taste the black tea and a slight bitterness (very slight), then a light coffee blend with a hint of chocolate filling my mouth. Theres some smoothness at the end, maybe the vanilla? The mate is there, but more in the background. Very mocha-like, without ultra strong/bitter coffee punch, but still close to coffee.

WHO’D GUZZLE THIS TEA LIKE ITS GOING OUT OF STYLE: coffee drinkers (thats right, kick that coffee habit) and mocha lovers. Black tea drinkers wanting to ease into mate.

COMMENTS:
I’m thinking OMG ICED TEA MOCHAS! This tea would be killer for that! A bit of rock sugar in the steeping, some milk/milk alternative and ice, all I need is a cute glass to put it in! No wait, kick it up with some ya know, whipped cream, chocolate drizzle. Blah, not healthy anymore!

So, I recently had a similar mate, Fusion Teas “Good Morning Mate” which I judged to be pretty decent coffee-like tea without tasting bitter liquid death. Good Morning Mate is more on the robusty woody roasted-tasting spiced side. JavaVana Mate is very different on the more chocolate side with extra dimension with the black tea.

JavaVana Mate is pretty good and I think I’ll buy some to gift for my Dad and father-in-law after skimming some off for myself.

I got this from DJBooth. I have to say it’s been fun to swap with him because I just told him “send me a surprise!” and he did deliver, lots of different things! This is the first that I’m catching up with as I back-log.
The liquor on this is very dark! I was pretty surprised. The smell is coffee, chocolate and somewhere in there I smell a warm caramel type smell. If I was rating on smell alone this would score pretty high.
The chocolate in this is very different than the other Teavana chocolate I’ve tried (the new oolong). It skipped the chocolate-oil flavoring for something much more natural tasting; to me at least! I feel that the only thing that could have gone better is that I was expecting a kind of fullness in the mouth feel that is missing in this cup. I think that this may be a personal preference when dealing with chocolate flavors, but there needs something to back it up so it doesn’t end up being so watery feeling.
Overall, a pretty nice cup.

I super need this today because I just could NOT sleep last night. Stupid insomnia. I think it was around 5 in the morning when I finally fell asleep, if I ever did, so I tried to stay in bed until 10. Sigh. Now I’m trying to be functional and I think this might be my new friend.
Anyway, most mate tastes sorta roasty like coffee to me. I can see why people like it in lattes. (Mate lattes seem to be the newest trend among folks I know. Maybe I’ll try it sometime.) Anyway, this brings back memories of last summer when I drank a lot of mate to try to stay awake without jangling my nerves to death during a summer language program. This has the same vanilla, cocoa, and coffee undertones to it as the last mate I had, with the overall result being very “mocha”. It’s fine, I like it a fair bit but doubt I’ll buy my own stash (Thanks to Ottawa Tea for sampling this to me!)

This has to be the closest thing to coffee that is mainly tea, as I can’t remember great coffee from various places that taste as good as this.

Before moving completely to tea, I was a coffee drinker, and not a happy one at that.

I had found most coffee made was sloppy or hastily done, very rare did I come across a very well made cup of coffee.

This tea makes drinking coffee fun, as there is a lot going on here, with the mixture of cocoa and chocolate to coffee-mimicking toasted mate and Assam black teas, with a little vanilla for extra flavoring.

Very chocolatey, but not as rich, thankfully, appropriately strong, nicely creamy and smooth.

It is amazing, as I have had mocha coffees before and never liked them, but this tea has possibly the best level of chocolate to tea.

I am also finding that I am liking this tea more and more with each sip.

First time with this tea this morning and I’m just not sure what to think. On one hand, it does have a strong coffeeesque flavor, but I’m not sure that that’s what I wanted. I am missing the chocolate and vanilla notes but I wonder if I had the water too hot (boiling instead of 200 degrees which I normally use on Matevana). I think I’ll like it once I make a few tweaks.

I’m betting my coffee-loving husband would love it though.

Yep, this one definitely tastes coffee-ish. It reminds me of a mocha. There are some vanilla flavors in it as well. The assam adds a touch of maltiness (although I wouldn’t mind tasting the assam a bit more). I can’t really taste the mate in this blend, it just comes across as the coffee flavor. Prepared with almond milk and stevia.

A sweet mate tea with notes of vanilla. This goes great with chocolate!

So I like coffee, but I cannot stand what it seems to do to my body. Tea is much gentler to me, but I still really liked the taste of coffee…and I miss it. I tried the Javavana in effort to get the taste without all the jitters and appetite stimulating effects, etc. I will have to give it a day to see how it plays out – but the taste is spot on. I kind of can’t believe it’s tea, it tastes that much like coffee. So far, so good – I think I’ll be revisiting this one again.

UPDATE:
Well, this gets a huge bump up. It tasted like coffee but was nowhere near as havoc wreaking on me. I am working on trying to build up a “staple” cabinet, and this one is in it for sure. Can’t wait for tomorrow morning to make this again!

I’ve been picking JavaVana over My Morning Mate recently, it tastes richer, fuller to me minus the citrus undertones. I need to get some more

I love this tea. It was given to me by a friend and I love mixing it with other teas. I mix it with CocoCaramel Sea Salt herbal tea, chocolate tea, vanilla tea- basically whatever is available to me. It always gives a stronger flavor. This and the My Morning Mate are my go to teas.

Not. a. fan.
This mate blend smells like Bailey’s and tastes like an overwhelming subpar Bailey’s. I’ve made pancakes with this tea and that ended up good, but I don’t think I’ll ever drink it again.