Cappuccino Caramel Crunch

Sip down!

As a latte, with honey and german rock sugar. Adding both honey and german rock sugar has been my sweetener of choice these days. The german rock sugar is good, but the honey adds a little extra flavor. Really nice evening dessert tea.

Drinking this tea while snacking on some korean puffed rice cake. Kinda miss the korean market back home in Vancouver Canada – they had the crazy machine thwacking away making them.

CRAP, forgot to check the tea isle while I was at the korean market!

I received this and a Strawberry Kiwi Fusion sample from Della Terra Teas on Friday after winning their Facebook giveaway recently. Amazingly, the tea arrived in Nova Scotia only a week after they sent it, which is a Canada Post miracle. Unfortunately there was some serious smell contamination from a bonus sample of Chocolate Chai Puerh they threw in, so I left the three teas to air out over the weekend. All that aside, Thank you to Della Terra teas for the samples! Winning things is always exciting!

I wanted a cup of hot chocolate today as it is sub-Arctic at work, but I couldn’t find any anywhere. Drat! So, I turned to this one as a good substitute, with less calories. Win! I gave it about 8 minutes to steep, which yielded a dark amber liquor, with the aroma of a rooibos based cappuccino. It does smell like cappuccino (coffee, sweet, cream) but the rooibos aroma is very present too. There is a bit of a bitter note at the end that is more reminiscent of coffee, but I’m hoping that isn’t included in the flavour (I hate coffee but tend to enjoy sweet frou frou cappuccinos the odd time I get them).

The first sips are a bit thin and a bit bitter. Not bitter in the way that tea can be, but more a hint of roasted coffee. I am a little surprised at the flavour, though I don’t know why because it tasted like it smells. Maybe I somehow anticipated the taste of a cappuccino, which would be hard to do without adding all the fat and sugar! :) I wish this had a touch more caramel flavour as that is the real selling point for me. There were a couple little squares in there which I can’t seem to find now so I assume they melted in? Either that or they disappeared!

Cumulatively, I enjoyed this, but it didn’t present the depth of flavour I was hoping for. Maybe if I doubled up on ‘leaf’ it would be a different story, but I’m worried about emphasising the dark bitter note too much. I’m such a wuss. Anyway, brilliant in theory but not quite for me in practice. Thanks again, Della Terra Teas!

Oh man…so this is caffeine free, which is bad new bears for me since it’s delicious! and can be an evening tea for me as i try not to drink too much caffeine in the evening even though it doesn’t affect me.

So first off…the smell…oh man the smell. See I looooove lattes and cappacinos and caramel machiatos and this…this smells divine! I’m sure if Ian was here he’d be asking me why i was making coffee when i have 5 pounds of tee to drink!

So, on to the taste. I steeped it for the 5 mins, and I’m thinking next time i’ll up the time a bit and/or add a bit extra to the mix. It’s a little light on the flavour for me but that’s also likely because of the smell, which has me expecting full on coffee haha I’m also tempted to add a wee bit of milk or cream to this just to see what happens…but another time. I may just need to take advantage of the sale (free 2oz!) going on this weekend with della terra…course then i need a plan for sneaking it into the house as well haha. Maybe this one gets sent to work… Really a nice tee for anyone who loves that caramel/cappacino type flavor. The roiboos doesn’t even phase me :)

This was a free sample included in my recent DT order! I thought it was really generous of them, since I only ordered 2 teas and it was during their 50% off Halloween sale to boot. The timing happened to be perfect though—I had a rather rough day and needed something comforting and dessert-y that wouldn’t keep me up all night. Well, it’s 4 in the morning, so I guess I mean won’t keep me up until morning!

While I’m not the biggest fan of rooibos, I don’t mind it in fruity blends (for example, it doesn’t bother me at all DT’s their Black Cat or Blueberry Cream!), and with dessert teas I can handle it with milk and sugar. Though this time, I actually added dulce de leche instead, which will give the desired sweet/creamy effect while also amping up the caramel notes.

This is pretty much just what you’d expect—nice, warming cappuccino and espresso notes with a backing sweet caramel. I found the coffee element to be a lot stronger than the caramel when I tasted it sans dulce, though after it was obviously a lot stronger. It’s got a very light quality, almost foamy. The rooibos is present but not enough to make me put down the cup thankfully. Just what I needed tonight!

As I was brewing this up last night, I could smell the rooibos quite heavily. Medicinal and icky, which resulted in me avoiding drinking it until now, when I drank cold tea out of a mug by my bed. I actually couldn’t figure out which tea I was drinking at first, but process of elimination clearly identified it as this one. Thankfully, the rooibos has been tamed, and the result is a reasonably pleasant cup of tea that mostly tastes like a variant of Creme Caramel Rooibos. I really can’t pick up on any cappuccino flavour whatosever.

Overall, not as bad as I expected, but not Della Terra’s finest tea. Winter Nog is a far superior rooibos, in my opinion!

Was bracing myself for this to taste bitter, thin, or otherwise disappointing or even gross—I’ve had some bad luck with tea that tries to taste like sweet coffee in the past—but I don’t know if it’s because I just had bamboo tea which is like a citrusy scrubbing out of the mouth or what but this is pretty good. The smell and taste of rooibos is definitely present but it’s not overpowering as rooibos-y dessert stuff goes. At first I didn’t really get any sense of cappucino or coffee at all, but then I remembered I haven’t actually had cappucino in like 10+ years and adjusted my coffee expectations, keeping in mind cap’s often more about caramel sweetness and creaminess over coffee flavor. With that in mind I can see it. This would be a nice late afternoon pick-me-up when I can’t actually have caffeine for whatever reason, because it does energize me, perhaps just from the memory association of the flavor containing caffeine in the past if that makes sense. It’s got a toasty sweet element that is right on a cold winter day like this, and brings nostalgia of a time in the ’90s when this sort of coffee drink profile was more a thing, aw.

i drank this last night as i watched the movie “It’s A Disaster”.
if you have netflix and you like dark comedies, watch it tonight! seriously.
i flailed and had tons of fun.

the first rooibos, no wait let me rephrase, the first tea i ever ordered and tasted, was DavidsTea Caramel Creme. similar to this. but we all know that Della Terra does it all just a little better. so this is a good desert rooibos and i enjoyed every sip. plus CAPPUCCINO!

thank you Anna for the great sample!

now i will breifly complain that i did place a davidstea order last week, my first in many many months, and it has been sent to the Undeliverable Mail office because of a typo on the shipping label and now i have to, like, email and call davidstea and stuff and it’s annoying cuz i just want me tea darnit!
but at least my della terra order shipped today. i got a sample of that Minty Cow coming and everything.

Cappuccino, caramel and rooibos just seem like they should go together! Yum! I received this in my ‘try me’ pack, and I didn’t see too many caramel cubes in my half an ounce sample. I think the caramel cubes that WERE there fell into my infuser. The little cubes are interesting! I love the cappuccino flavor — I don’t think I’ve had that in a tea yet. Sadly, the caramel flavor was a bit lacking. I would LOVE this blend if it tasted more like caramel. Like I said, it’s a perfect trio of flavors!

Della Terra has not failed me yet. I love how smooth and caramel-y this is. A nice caffeine free treat before bed.

Received my first ever swap today from Dexter3657, and holy moly, does this gal know how to put together a swap! All wrapped up pretty, with a list of teas and their ingredients? Holy moly. HUGE thank you!

This is the first tea that called to me, likely because it the last decaf I pulled out of the box. It smells very much like a caramel cappuccino out of the bag, a smell I’m very familiar with having worked as a barista. Steeped it’s a bit less coffee-ish and more caramel-y.

My first sips were a bit surprising. “Okay, this is a rooibos… yes, I can taste that… where’s the caramel… oh I feel it now… no coffee?” I drank half the mug (one cup) before I added Truvia, and then the coffee came back with mucho caramel-y butteriness. Yum.

I think I would’ve liked more coffee flavor in this for it to really be a great cappuccino tea, however it’s still a solid coffee offering for a late-at-night-treat. Thanks, Dexter3657!

EDIT: I accidentally let this sit over night. I actually thought I was drinking coffee with the first sip! So, coffee flavor achieved.