Tea Reviews | It's All About The Leaf

Posts Tagged ‘Rich Chocolate’

Even though the instructions say to use boiling water I’ve heard that maté can get scalded and become bitter like green teas, so I kept the steeping temperature at 90ºC. The tea smelled so incredibly chocolatey when I opened the package, like one of those rich chocolate shakes you can sometimes still get at diners. I could see that cocoa nibs mixed in with the mate leaves aswell which is a good sign – I always like it when a company uses real ingredients instead of ‘flavouring’.

The first thing I can taste when I sip the tea is the mate; it has the roasted, nutty, and slightly vegetale flavour that is unique to that particular plant. But underneath there’s a creamy, malty flavour with a hint of sweetness that makes me think of Ovaltine a bit. The chocolate is there too but maybe not as a stong as I wished I was – although that might just mean that I need to steep it longer. The taste lingers subtly and pleasently in the mouth, not letting itself be dismissed.

This is a wonderful, unique blend that I really enjoyed drinking. Congrats to Frank for creating another winner.

You can purchase the Malted ChocoMate directly from the 52teas website.

This is a herbal blend from Tea forte who describe it as “a rich, chocolate reward, nearly as gratifying as a velvety truffle”. Well, I don’t know if it’s all that but it is very good.

Being a chocoholic I prefer the real thing – dark and melting on your fingers. I’ve been disappointed many times by teas that promise a real chocolate taste and deliver only a hint. I was pleasantly surprised by Coco Truffle; not only by the sweet aroma which with eyes shut could make me believe that it was a mug of hot cocoa rather than tea, but the rich almost milky taste had tons of real chocolate flavor.

The ingredients are listed as cacao, cinnamon, fennel, licorice root, cardamom, ginger, cloves, black pepper. The flavor from the cacao beans was the most pronounced. I suspect that the cardamom gave the tea it’s creamy characteristic but the other spices, fennel and licorice root only came through as an aftertaste. I think that either fennel or licorice root and not both would have been sufficient but overall the combination was a success.

I followed Tea forte’s guidelines and brewed it for 5 minutes in water that was just short of boiling. A second cup made with the same tea bag had very little of the coco flavor left but the other ingredients came through and it was almost like a weak chai. Tea forte’s signature pyramidal tea bags are very elegant looking and the design seems to give the tea plenty of room to steep but they are very expensive at $1 per bag so it’s unlikely I would be buying these regularly but perhaps as a special treat or as a gift.

You can purchase Tea Forte Coco Truffle Tea directly from their website, and in various high-end establishments around the world.