Chocolate Hazelnut

Sipdown (643)!

Alright – I’ve been putting off writing tasting notes that were sipdowns all week because there’s still a handful of teas that I got from VariaTEA last Tuesday that I haven’t been able to add to my cupboard yet because their Steepster pages are stuck on the mobile view/they’re experiencing that ‘cacheing glitch’ but I’ve got all of them but two added in now so… fuck it!

Just know that my cupboard number right now isn’t perfectly reflective of the number of teas I own – it’s two teas off. (I’m sure this bugs ME more than anyone else)

Anyway, I received this one a while back from Kittenna – I was storing it in a little box of other samples wrapped in tin foil because they all have REALLY strong aromas and because I was storing it in that box away from the rest of my samples I forgot about it for a long while. It’s quite nice, though! I don’t know that it’s the kind of thing that I would personally end up buying from Citizen because the chocolate notes are really strong and I don’t tend to lean towards chocolate teas in a way that warrants me having them around in larger quantities, but it’s a very nice rich milk chocolate note accented by sweet, toasted hazelnuts. It gives off this decadent chocolatey ‘brittle’ sort of taste! Very full bodied and robust, and the mouthfeel almost seems thicker and more velvety too. There is just a hint of astringency in the finish, but it’s light enough that to me it just reminds me of the natural dryness that you get from the ‘skins’ on most nuts.

I like this one! It’s a nice dessert tea.

Pre-birthday cuppa. My long-time friend who is now also a coworker makes the best cookies, and he knows my love affair with Nutella, and always uses it as an ingredient in the batch of birthday cookies he makes me and brings me at work. Today is birthday cookie day (this year are some yin-yang peanut butter-Nutella cookies! Mmmm!), since this Saturday (St. Patrick’s Day) didn’t fall on my Saturday schedule. So I grabbed this chocolate hazelnut sampler I picked up from Citizen Tea to accompany!

It’s good! The base is chocolately, but has a warm nuttiness to it, too. It’s very smooth and sweet. I think my only issue is it that I wish the tea felt a little fuller and the flavor a little richer; I’m getting the impression that I’m going to have to double-leaf this to get the kind of experience that I’m currently craving out of this, based on my initial cup. Some decent flavor notes are there, they just aren’t popping enough to really wow me, and the base feels a little weak. I’m of the personal opinion one shouldn’t need to use extra leaf for an average cup, so I’d say that’s my one complaint with this otherwise tasty tea.

Yeah this was delicious. A tasty, sweet, rich flavoured black. Could be a little more hazelnutty but I was pretty pleased.

I quite enjoyed this one! I like the mix of chocolate and hazelnut. I have a hazelnut agave here at home, so I would probably add it to the tea and make the nuttiness come out more. Also, I’m planning on trying this one as a latte next ’cause I know it would be delicious! Yummmm!

Ahh finally. Had this again today and got plenty of flavour. Still generic, and sourish. But the nutty hazel tones and chocolate did make an appearance… noticeably! I’m not sure what I did differently this time. Could be the cocoa bits sunk to the bottom of my sample.

Sample from cavocorax this one wasn’t bad. it’s not a knock your socks off omg yes lease! sort of tea, but again, given that this is a canadian company, availability may win out next time i need to order. this is more milk chocolate than dark and the hazelnut is really in the background here. I wish it was a little more nutty and more like dark chocolate, but again, not half bad.

This is just ok for me. It’s sweet chocolate with a hint of nut. Nothing really wrong with it, but it’s not really special either. I would prefer it if it were a little more bitter chocolate, and more nutty. IMHO there are better chocolate nut teas out there.