Upbio

Sipdown… errr, eatdown?? (2157)

Confession Time. I had actually completely forgotten that I added this chocolate to my Steepster cupboard, and I finished it off ages ago so I guess it’s time I write a tasting note for them. They were one of the things I got as a free sample back during Montreal Tea Festival in 2022!

It honestly took me a little while to get used to the flavour. The chocolate itself is really nice, as it has been in all of the different flavours I’ve tried through sampling. It’s more the wintergreen that throws me. It’s pretty potent and it’s also a very lovely flavour but something about the sweet and cooling nature of the mint combined with the dark chocolate just reminds me so much of mouthwash. It’s not disgusting but it is a visceral enough taste memory that it kind of screws with my brain a tiny bit.

I think that’s ultimately why it took me so long to get through the full box. It was like three months of slowly nibbling on the different tablets of chocolate. In hindsight, the slow pace was probably a good thing since this is caffeine boosted chocolate and a full box would have had me running around like a racehorse!

Would I get this one again? I don’t think so. The company is very cool and the chocolates are great, but I enjoyed several of the other flavours over this one.

This was the other tea infused chocolate I tried from Upbio at the festival.

I picked this one out as my sample because it was the most unique sounding of their flavours, though I also just enjoy the flavour of thyme quite a bit and I was curious if it would actually taste distinctly like thyme or if they would shy away from the herbaceous taste like many companies who claim to have “herb infused” confectionery often do.

It was actually very good with a surprisingly strong thyme flavour and I did genuinely consider buying a full box – but at this point I’d already scooped up several other tea related sweets (and some bottles of soy sauce) and was trying to be more reserved with the rest of my festival budget. Seriously though; this was a chocolate for the herb lovers out there. Really, really thyme forward and the combo was so unique and well juxtaposed. Just… interesting in a delicious way.

Something from the MTL Tea Festival that I forgot to write about!

Upbio is a chocolate company that makes highly caffeinated chocolates infused with tea. They were sampling (and selling) at the festival and this is one of two of their chocolate flavours that I tried at their booth – the one that the friend I was with picked out to try. I’m not sure how I feel about ginger and chocolate paired together; there’s something about it that’s slightly cacophonous to me in a way I don’t totally understand. That said, the quality of the chocolate is lovely and it was definitely gingery in a hot sort of way. If, unlike me, chocolate and ginger does appeal to you thin this would probably be delicious.

I’ve taken to starting the day with a tablet of this 72% tea-infused chocolate. While wintergreen would not be my first choice of flavour, this is really growing on me. I am plotting an UpBio order. Maybe.

Today was the second day of the online Quebec Tea Festival, but I just wasn’t feeling it. Exhausted again.

In lieu of attending the festival, I took out one of my festival sampler boxes and tried a piece of this.

Quite tasty balance of 72% organic fair trade chocolate, organic theine, and wintergreen extract.

I was quite excited about chocolate with tea being included in the box, but I didn’t know which flavour. Mint is usually my last choice, so I wouldn’t have opted for this one with wintergreen though it is delicious.

I will have no difficulty finishing this teeny box of chocolate tiles.

Montreal Tea Festival – Tea #11

This was from a stand selling “energizing” chocolate made with green tea extract. A bit of a stretch for a tea festival, if you ask me, but we still gave it a try because it was free and chocolate is good! To be honest, the chocolate itself tasted really nice but you’re never going to taste the tea in if it’s only using an extract, and while it did taste a little bit fruity it really didn’t taste at all like grapefruit. So, for the price tag, I don’t feel like these chocolate bars are really worth it – as nice as the dark chocolate was.