Earl Grey Chocolat

I’ve found it finally – my favourite chocolate tea!!! :D I just lurrrrrrve this!!!!

As a chocolate lover, I am hopelessly attracted to chocolate teas. However, most of the chocolate teas in the market are not as tasty as they have promised. Many of them smell lovely but there’s a lack of chocolate in the taste. Some are malty rather than chocolatey, and a few are even bitter. :(

But Earl Grey Chocolat of Lupicia is so so so different! It smells and tastes very much like milk chocolate – rich, sweet, chocolatey and non-bitter. Reminds me of hot Valrhona chocolate… it is so hard to believe that it is a tea. Better still, the base of this tea is a floral Earl Grey. The combination of bergamot and chocolate is awesomely fragrant and delicious, just like fruit-infused chocolate truffles. :D Serve it at a tea party and I am sure that every guest will be amazed!

Since I really enjoyed their Earl Grey, I decided to try this one, even though I’d been burned by other chocolate teas. And I’m really glad I did.

This is a truly decadent tea. Sometimes I felt like I was eating one of those chocolate covered fruit jellies, it was that good. The bergamot and cocoa are evenly balanced, and the one time I put sugar in it was amazing. It’s plenty good without, though. I almost felt guilty drinking this in the morning! Another Earl Grey win from Lupicia.

I quite enjoyed this one, though I’m not a huge fan of Earl Grey. The chocolate note was prominent, quite rich and deep, working nicely with the bergamont. I’m not sure if I’d repurchase, but this was a good-quality, well blended cuppa. So many oddball blends turn out worse than their individual parts, but this worked quite nicely. It’s a good cuppa for an autumn day, somehow. A bit decadent, but somehow also…pragmatic. I imagine drinking this before a big late-night assignment, wanting to have a treat but still knowing there’s a lot of work ahead. Perhaps it’s my quintessentially British soul that equates a “treat” with “hard work.” No chocolate tea without some commensurate effort!

I pulled out this old tea this morning, which despite being a 2018 purchase, I have yet to try. I enjoy the flavor of Earl Grey mixed with hot chocolate, so I figured this would probably be a win for me. (Plus, I’ve been craving chocolate orange things lately… guess I’ve just been in a chocolate+citrus mood?)

The aroma is lovely… has a strong sweet, fudgy sort of chocolate aroma, as well as a strong bergamot aroma. I’m a bit surprised both aromas are so distinct without one overpowering the other.

The flavor of the bergamot comes off a little strong in the cup though; not aggressively so but just slightly stronger than my personal preferences for bergamot. It has a pretty strong citrusy sour aftertaste, tasting somewhere between lime and grapefruit, and it has more of a floral quality than I typically personally get from EGs. I do like the chocolate, as it isn’t coming across as highly artificial, but its flavor is muted a bit against the strength of the bergamot. I think the base tea, which was highly CTC, is what is really adding to the sour bite of the tea… a bit more astrigency than I typically prefer in a black, too.

I won’t have any issues finishing up this cup, but I think in the future what this needs is to be latte material. The strength of the base tea and bergamot should hold up nicely against added milk, and the milk should smooth out the rougher edges and add a creamy element to the chocolate notes.

Thanks so much to tea-sipper for the swap! This tea definitely seems more like chocolate than like earl grey, though I feel like I can sense a bit of greyness down below. I would have preferred a bit of a stronger bergamot, but with milk and sugar, this is a very pleasant cup. It’s not a flavor combo I expected to work, but it did! The resteep was too weak, but I quite enjoyed the first steep.

This tea has been on my wishlist for years and I was finally able to find it during a trip to Paris. It looks like a CTC tea. I know what that looks like, but I’m not sure if it is attributed to the taste I’m noticing. I’ve had other CTC teas by Lupicia, the first being Sweet Potato, so some of the flavors in this remind me of that. That flavor is under a strong amount of bergamot and the chocolate is much more subtle. I have to concentrate to pick out the chocolate which almost seems more aromatic, like chocolate scratch and sniff stickers, but doesn’t have the depth that real chocolate has. I’m enjoying this tea, but I do wish it had more chocolate in it.

On another note…. I really need to start letting my tea cool more. I have noticed that I have been burning my lips and roof of my mouth by trying to enjoy my tea too quickly after steeping. Someday I’ll learn. Maybe.

Additional notes: After the disappointing ‘Earl Grey’ from Lupicia, I had to try this one again to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating that it wasn’t the same bergamot as that. It definitely isn’t. I love this one but can’t stand their ‘Earl Grey’. It’s so odd they are different! I mixed the little bit left from a Cameron B sample with a little of what Kawaii433 sent over, so thank you both. :D The bergamot here is sweet, a bit floral and a bit citrus. A great combination. It’s quite a lovely tea for this freezing weather and I’m glad I found it before it was gone.

Cacao nibs, chocolate is really nice in this one. It’s a very dark rich chocolate flavor, more flavorful that some of their other chocolate ones I’ve tried. A very nice bittersweet chocolate and in the later steeps, a sweeter milk chocolate. Unfortunately, that’s about the only thing I enjoyed about this one. I hardly taste the bergamot… And the heavy floral takes that away. I don’t even have a clue what kind of floral flavor but it’s not really pleasant to me. If you don’t mind too much floral or you love the taste of floral teas (strooong floral teas :P), you may like this but for me, it is just far too perfumey for me. I finished a while ago, and I still feel like I have a nose full of perfume.

5g, 200ml, 212F, 3 steeps: 3m, 3.5m, 4.5m

Sipdown! (1)

Just in case some of you don’t already know this: Lupicia is closing their California, France, and Australia stores AND the corresponding online stores! ONLY the Japanese physical & online stores and Hawaiian physical store will remain open. They have not made any public announcements yet, so the only information we have comes directly from store employees.

And now, a moment of silence… (while I sob uncontrollably in the background)

So today, I will be re-tasting a few Lupicia teas to determine whether or not I need to restock them while there’s still time. It will be possible to order from their Japanese website and have it delivered internationally, however it requires the use of a third-party forwarding service, which is both expensive and seems a bit sketchy to me. So while I’m sure I’ll resort to that route eventually, I would like to start out well-stocked at the least!

I’ve already ordered 100g each of my beloved Melon Oolong and Ripe Mango Oolong, don’t you worry! But there are a few others in my cupboard that I’m not sure about, so here we are.

I think this one intrigues me in concept rather than in execution. I’ve only rated it a 78, which I wouldn’t normally consider high enough to be a cupboard staple. But for some reason, I remembered it more fondly than I should have. I guess I’m always a sucker for an Earl Grey with nontraditional additions…

Anyway, the tea. The base is a mix of small traditional leaves and CTC pellets, which is a common occurrence for Lupicia’s black blends. I generally take about 30 seconds off my normal steep to account for the CTC, but who knows whether that’s really necessary or not… The base has a smooth malty flavor with some earth and wood notes.

This has a nice, slightly dry cocoa flavor, which is similar to their other chocolate teas, such as Thé au Chocolat and Banane Chocolat. It’s definitely an unsweetened, dark cocoa note. The bergamot here is quite floral, which is disappointing for me, as I prefer a more citrusy bergamot flavor. So for that reason, this would never be a favorite of mine.

But I suppose that’s a good thing now, one fewer Lupicia tea to worry about! XD

It’s not so much an earl grey with chocolate, but dark chocolate with citrusy and floral notes. With milk it makes for an interesting sugar-free hot chocolate substitute. There’s something that almost verges into “biting wood chips and citrus rinds” territory, but otherwise it’s easy drinking.

Thanks, OMGsrsly!