Another from the GCTTB. This one was interesting to me… I haven’t had much luck with hazelnut in tea previously, so I figured I’d give it one mo try to see if it was the tea or the hazelnut that I wasn’t liking. So here it goes…
They dry tea is filled with hunks of toffee, chocolate, hazelnut and popped rice (tbh they almost look like rice krispies.) The smell definitely delivers on the name as I can pick out notes of toffee (vanilla flavored?), chocolate and hazelnut, there’s a dark undertone from the black tea, almost a bit of maltiness, but not much.
The liquor is a dark, cloudy orange-brown and has quite a bit of film on the top of the cup (though it’s not surprising given all the oily ingredients). The aroma contains lovely sweet notes from the toffee which blend well with the hints of chocolate and maltiness, while the hazelnut gives a nice middle note to round out the profile.
The flavor however doesn’t deliver the same upfront notes as the aroma though… I pretty much loose all of the toffee notes (though the sweetness is still there) which makes this tea a bit flat in my opinion. The chocolate is there, but it has mixed with the malty notes to form more of a dark chocolate while the hazelnut just doesn’t mesh well for me. It’s there and it’s definitely hazelnut but it just feels like its not blending into the rest of the flavor profile. I also get a really oily mouth feel that I’ve noticed in others hazelnut teas as well (especially as it cools).
At this point I am really thinking that hazelnut teas are just not for me, which is fine there’s lots of other teas out there! That said (putting aside my dislike for the hazelnut part) its not a bad tea, there’s some nice flavors there and I’m sure that some sugar would help to bring out the toffee flavors more too, but it’s just not my cup of tea ;)
