I went through an ordering phase not long ago where I stuck anything that had the word chocolate in it in my shopping basket any time I bought anything from anyplace. Ok, maybe that’s a tiny exaggeration, but it was certainly true of online tea shopping. I was kidnapped by the chocolate tea nymphs and made to do all sorts of unimaginable things.
That explains why I voluntarily ordered rooibos from Teavana.
The mixture is kind of funky. I found what looked like about half of a stick of cinnamon in among the pumpkin-seed looking green cardamom, almost purple colored flakes that must be the chocolate, red rooibos, something that looked like chocolate chips (carob?), and assorted other hunks ’o stuff.
The tea looks a lot like apple cider, the kind that’s opaque. Oddly it doesn’t smell very chocolatey. There’s some chocolate right at the beginning, then a lull of almost no aroma, then the spiciness at the end, with a black pepper exclamation point.
The flavor is pretty much the same. It’s surprisingly vacant right in the middle, with flavor at the beginning and the end of the sip. I wonder whether, like other Teavana blends, I should increase the mixture/water ratio?
Better yet, I think I should make this on the stovetop with milk and sweetener and see how it comes out. It does have a lot of similarity with a chocolate chai, without the caffeine.
Further experimentation will be necessary. Though I’m not getting a lot of rooibos thanks to the spiciness of the blend, this would not be a top choice for me among tisanes just drinking it straight up.
