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Can’t say I’m really enjoying this one, unfortunately…

I got this as a sample from RoT in their catalog, and I was kind of excited to try it. Strawberry and chocolate! Where can it go wrong?

Well, for starters, the bag smells a little musty. I really wanted a bright strawberry smell, and it just smells like dusty strawberry mixed with dusty chocolate. So I steeped this bugger up for 7 minutes, and tossed the mini-bag.

Here’s where the problem begins. For some reason, the infusion smells like strawberries and chocolate, mixed with a cilantro-type smell. I loathe cilantro. I’m one of those people that has that gene that makes it taste like disgusting soap. I don’t know how people can like it. Soapy-cilantro-rooibos-strawberry-chocolate. No thanks.

It actually definitely doesn’t taste like cilantro, which is a plus. This is a very light rooibos, with the strawberry and chocolate clearly coming out. The strawberry is more on the forefront of the taste, the chocolate in the aftertaste, but the two blend together. The only problem is that this tastes like cheap chocolate, like the kind you get from CVS for Easter. That kind of musty, goes-white-very-quickly chocolate that kind of doesn’t taste like chocolate, but more like plastic-chocolate. The strawberry isn’t a round and juicy flavor, but an echo of something more akin to strawberry candy. Like those little strawberry hard candies wrapped in a pseudo-strawberry paper and had a semi-liquid filling.

The rooibos base lends an odd tartness to the blend. I definitely think this would have been better with a black tea base. The rooibos isn’t robust enough to support these flavors.

Is it horrific? Nope, but it’s certainly not great either. I’m having trouble finishing my cup. I could imagine other people enjoying this, though.