Mint Chocolate Rooibos

This is one of those teas that smells so good you just want to cradle it under your nose and hang out with it in between sips. The smell is more chocolatey than the taste, which is predominantly minty with just a hint of chocolate. The rooibos is a good base but is very much in the background, which I liked. Overall it’s a solid after-dinner dessert tea, and since it has peppermint it’s a good one to turn to after one of those meals where you wish you’d worn your stretchy pants.

This was one of the samples that came with my Christmas gift.

I have not had a lot of luck with chocolate in teas. It just…overall the taste usually is really weird.
This tea however….Not sure if I could like this enough to get 50 grams of it….I have a feeling that it would end up getting stale in my cupboard. However I would love it if DT came out with a smaller option…like 30 grams. That way…if it gets stale I won’t feel like I’ve wasted a lot of tea, not to mention….the prices at DT while they are not hugely $$, they are a bit pricey, considering there are A LOT of teas I want to try…the prices make it a bit difficult.

This one I got as a sample with one of my many (too many – especially considering I have a local store ah) recent online orders from DavidsTea. It smells wonderful – all minty and chocolately. Yum!

Yep everything they say is true. This one’s pretty delicious. I can taste the mint, of course, and the chocolate and even a hint of vanilla. I may steep it a bit longer next time around but overall a nice smooth finish for this one.

(so, I don’t have a large selection of teas.. I feel like my tasting notes are going to be very repetitive! I need more teas!)

I really enjoy this tea – enough that I keep reaching for it, and drinking multiple cups when I do. Today I’m not really getting the York Peppermint Bites taste, but instead a mostly mint taste. Second steep is just as dark as the first, but most of the flavor is gone, leaving “just” a nice rooibos.

I only bought 25g and I am coming to the end. If I buy it again, I know I will drink it.

I do prefer this Mint Chocolate Rooibos from DavidsTea over the Teavana variation on the same theme. The big difference is that here rooibos is a major component. Rather than being way down in the ingredient list after a bunch of food, rooibos is the number one ingredient.

Mint Chocolate Rooibos does taste like rooibos, but it also tastes like both peppermint and chocolate. It’s okay, for what it is, but I won’t seek it out in a full-size version. This was the end of the first of a couple of sample packs which I ordered at the sale right after the holiday season.

I’ve been noticing that there are lots of overlaps between DavidsTea and Teavana. However, the former seems more concerned with the tea experience, and the latter seems very big on visuals—hence the huge chunks in all of their blends. The chunks are filled with stuff which would never get infused, since it is trapped inside, so I grind my Teavana blends before infusion.

Still, I have to admit that I don’t really like the concept of foodish infusions very much. It just doesn’t cohere very well with my personal approach to tea. I like food, and I like tea, but for me they are separate categories.

This one tastes very minty and I don’t really get the chocolate flavour.

I just realized that I had a couple of samples left over from my Davids order that I still had to try. I figured I might as well try the rooibos blend today while I am taking a break from caffeine.

I don’t know why but for some reason it is just not working for me at all. With each sip, I get more and more overwhelmed by the mint. I can barely taste the rooibos, the vanilla or the chocolate. I would have loved more of the woodsy flavor mixed with the mint and the chocolate but the mint overwhelmed my palate. I have Read My Lips in my cupboard and it has the same flavor profile but with better balance of flavor.

Rooibos also tends to be a problematic area for me as well. It’s a love/hate thing where it doesn’t work for me more often than it does. The only rooibos blend I’ve tried and loved is Oh Canada.

Mint and Chocolate are two of my favorite ingredients for a tea, as anyone can tell from looking at my Read My Lips tin, it is almost always empty its a very vicious cycle of purchasing it and consuming it…Enter Mint Chocolate Rooibos!

My sister loves this tea, funny she tried it after I introduced her to Read My Lips. I was complaining that I didn’t have any (read my lips) so immediately she said I had to try this tea, as I was heading out of her house she handed me a DT sample pack that had come with one of her online orders. I went home and brewed it up and immediately fell in love.

I find the flavor profile quite similar to read my lips; however the touch of vanilla in mint chocolate takes it to another level. It’s not like drinking the same tea as read my lips so it is a change up, but a slight one at that. I guess it would be great for those concerned about caffeine as well; however that is not one of my larger concerns.

Definitely a keeper for those who like mint and chocolate!

1.5 tsp for 250mL water @98C, steeped seven minutes, drunk bare.

I find rooibos needs a long steep.

This tastes like mint plus milk chocolate plus rooibos, with a bit of vanilla. And it’s a decent rooibos base, not woody or, oddly, minty on its own. Decent, but not great; if the rooibos were separated from the other flavours, you wouldn’t taste much.

Fun to drink.

This tea is absolutely delicious!!