Florence

I was a bit skeptical of this tea when I first smelled it…mainly because I forgot what it was supposed to be. xD Finally when I decided to brew up a cup I realized it smelled exactly like dark chocolate. Why I didn’t think about that before? I have no idea. xD I’m kinda slow haha
It does taste pretty chocolatey-but I feel like it should be stronger.
I thought it was gonna be more of a hazelnut flavor, but I guess not. I don’t know..I have mixed feelings about this. I’ll definitely give it a few more shots…and then probably end up really liking it and buying more xD

TTBCr2

Meh.

This one smelled good when I opened the package while going through the Traveling Tea Box C, so I pulled out enough for a mugful. I mean, it smelled really good.

And I cannot deny the aroma of this tea. It’s really delicious smelling. It just didn’t quite taste as good as it smelled. I barely got anything resembling hazelnut, which is disappointing. I think that was my problem with it. I wanted hazelnut. Because it did taste good.

I drank about half of the mug and then tried to follow the suggestion on the Harney & Sons webpage to add milk to make it taste like Nutella. I’m at work, so there is no milk, so I added a little bit of non-dairy creamer. It did bring out the nuttiness a touch, but still not enough for me.

Ah well.

It was tasty and a nice morning sweet. I can’t deny that. I’m glad I tried it, but nope, not the tea for me.

Oh well, I knew from the aroma this wouldn’t be my kind of tea. I could just smell this sour note that is supposed to be chocolate (or hazelnut) but is not. Nut flavors are really difficult to pull off, it seems. It was okay, not too weak, but the flavor was generally not my thing. It would be kind of stretched to claim there’s chocolate and nuts in there, anyway. I only have a sample of it, so I will just polish it off and that’s that. I won’t be getting it again.

I was reading all the wonderful reviews on this tea as I waited for the water to boil; I was getting excited to try this, I love chocolate. I had forgotten I don’t like chocolate flavoring. :( I’m kind of bummed because chocolate tea sounds great. I think I’m ok with real chocolate or cocoa in tea it’s just the artificial stuff I seem to not like.
After drinking half the cup I did add some milk and could taste the hazelnut but the fake chocolate was still in the background. Many, many, many people do love this tea.

This was a huge miss for me. I had to make this one twice just as I did with Boston because I thought I had over steeped it. But again, just like Boston, turns out it tastes the same when I follow the brewing instructions perfectly.

This didn’t smell like chocolate or hazelnut nor did it taste like either of those things. It just tastes like a black tea that I don’t enjoy. The base tastes the same as the base in Boston as well. Actually, I’m finding that all of the Harney black bases taste quite similar and I’m not a fan.

So how does Harney & Sons Florence compare with Adagio—let’s see which one was it? Aquarius, I believe. Funny that i have no difficulty remembering that Florence = hazelnut + chocolate, but that same connection doesn’t work with a name as truly and utterly arbitrary as Aquarius. I realize that one might consider Florence to be arbitrary as well—though I have been there and find it closer to the warm and cuddly choco-hazelnut veering Nutella feeling than, say Rome—but Aquarius contains the root AQUA, that is: water. What could water have to do with such a tea to begin with that it does not have to do with every other tea as well?

Enough about names. I find that Florence is sweeter than Aquarius. It’s more of a milk chocolate than a cocoa nib taste to me—and that’s not only because I added cream. I added cream to Aquarius as well! I give extra points for the visuals of Aquarius, which includes beautiful cornflower petals (is the blue color supposed to be the water reference, perhaps?). But they add nothing to the taste, as far as I can tell, so on the flavor front, Florence wins this semi-steep-off chez sherapop.

It’s not a full-fledged, bona fide steep-off because I did not prepare the teas at the same moment and drink them side-by-side. I did, however, use similar steeping parameters. If anything, Florence should suffer, having come later in the day than Aquarius. I could by now be tea-sated, after all. (Did I just hear you snicker?) On the other hand, perhaps my evaluation has been be elevated by my BCC (blood caffeine content)? It’s possible, but I gave this tea a higher rating before as well, and I feel that it was fair.

Great aroma – chocolate and hazelnut are equally strong. Taste is not as strong as I had hoped – pleasant but not great. Added a little coconut milk and rock sugar to enhance the flavor – a little better. I’ll enjoy drinking this one but it won’t be on the “go-to” shelf of my tea cupboard.

I LOVE this tea. Reminiscent of Italy and all things classic, elegance, romantic and timeless. The scent alone is your passport to a small cafe in Piazza della Signoria! The blend is divine.

I had high hopes for this tea since I’d been reading a lot of hype about it & I love chocolate. You can smell the chocolate in the dry leaves, but I didn’t really taste it. I needed cream & sweetener to get through this straight; it had too much of a heavy/overpowering black tea taste to me. I mix this w/chai now to lessen the harsh black tea flavor.

ETA: Mixed it with my 52Teas Mint Chocolate Honeybush & enjoying both much better! Still not tasting much chocolate, but the honeybush is balancing the overpowering black tea taste I was getting from straight Florence. Raising the rating.

I like this much better than regular chocolate tea. The hazelnut really seems to enhance the chocolate flavor by providing a nice contrast.