Holiday Tea-son! The ninth tea from my advent calendar. I actually had an extra teabag of this as a freebie with my advent calendar order, and I just stashed it away figuring it was probably in the calendar too, since it is one of their popular holiday flavors. So this morning I was able to make a pot of tea using my 16 oz. dobin using both teabags instead of just a single cuppa. Huzzah!
The dry leaf has a strong scent of chocolate and coconut, which are two of my favorite things, but I’m a little sad that the teabag version given out for the samplers doesn’t have the vegan marshmallows… they would’ve added a nice, sweet, creamy element. Ah well.
The cocoa shells and nibs actually have a pretty forward flavor here, reminding me of when I steeped plain cocoa shells, creating that bittersweet/dark chocolate flavor in the cup, and I am getting a coconut note as well. The black tea is coming out relatively smooth and lacking in bitter/astringent notes, though without the marshmallow which would’ve added some sweetness to the blend, the cocoa itself is a bit bittersweet so the tea could do with some sweetening in the teabag form. What is lacking to pull it all together for me is a sweet and creamy element, since it tastes like it wants to be hot cocoa, but has the light mouthfeel of a tea, so I think this is a tea that is simply meant to be taken as a latte. Once I mixed some warm coconut milk (and I use the sweetened kind!) into my cup, it really pulled it together. The coconut notes were emphasized, the cocoa flavor now felt more like creamy hot cocoa than bittersweet hot cocoa water, the sweetness it was lacking was provided from the milk, and it was quite nice. It felt a little bland before that. The flavor was there, it just really needed the thicker/creamier mouthfeel and a little more sweetness to make the chocolate and coconut come together for me.
Flavors: Cocoa, Coconut, Dark Bittersweet, Dark Chocolate
