Cha Dao

Enjoyable bottled tea. No sweetener and the tea has a wonderfully fruity finish. The bottle I got was a little too tannic, but that might just have been a refrigeration problem.

I debated adding this or not but ultimately decided to because while I feel this isn’t really a tea beverage, I think the intent is for it to be a tea beverage. So I will log it.

Why don’t I consider this a tea beverage? Because it has coffee in it and the dominant taste is that of coffee. This tastes like something that you’d buy in the grocery store next to the Starbucks bottled Frappuccinos. Or actually order from Starbucks itself. Why do I think this was intended as a tea beverage? Because it’s from a company with ‘Cha’ in the name and they specify that they use Yunnan Gold black tea.

But does this taste like tea? No. I mean, I’m probably picking up hints of the tea and I’m sure it contributes to the taste, but I don’t drink this and think, mmm, tea. This is coffee. Actually, it tastes a lot like a diluted chocolate covered espresso bean. I think the chocolate comes from the Yunnan (cocoa notes perhaps) and the obviously large amount of sugar this has. Because this has a lot of sugar. It’s listed second on the ingredient list after water. And 16oz of this has 72 calories, which is the same as almost 5 teaspoons of sugar. Five. In 16oz. So yes, this is sweet.

That sweetness is probably what saves it for me and makes this enjoyable. I like chocolate covered espresso beans and this is like drinking them. So my big conundrum – how do I rate this? Do I rate it just on overall taste? Because it was good, I’d have it again (mostly because I do love me some sugar). Or do I rate this as a tea? Because expecting a tea and getting this? Yeah, that wasn’t so pleasant. As a non-tea bottle drink, this is probably a 73. But expecting a sip of tea-like beverage? This is probably a 23. So I’ll give it a rating with the average of those two.

This is easily the best iced oolong I’ve had that I didn’t make myself. Most bottled oolongs I’ve had before are more oxidized and I prefer greener oolongs. This one is nicely green – not overly floral but still sweet. Really good for commercial bottled tea.

Had this last night. Pretty good – actually tasted like I brewed up some sencha and stuck it in the fridge. Not overly exciting but pretty good for something I picked up at the store on a whim.