Chocolate Mint Black Tea

Ashmanra’s Sipdown Challenge | January 2023 | Celebrate National Bittersweet Chocolate Day with a chocolate tea or have a favorite chocolate with your tea!

I had to plumb the depths of my stash to find a sipdown-ready chocolate tea! I have no idea how long this one has been languishing in my tea drawer, but I had two remaining teabags. I figured I’d need to work hard to coax much flavor out of this ancient grocery store tea, so I steeped them together. The scent is pleasant enough, almost milk chocolate-y with bright peppermint notes, but the flavor is almost entirely mint. The black tea gets pretty lost; it’s not really supporting or complementing the flavors.

Yep, pretty much what I expected. Not offensive, but pretty unremarkable.

2023 sipdown count: 5/75

While I am not usually a mint tea lover, my taste for this tea has truly evolved. A nice pallet cleanser after a meal, a wonderful dessert tea, or even just a morning wake up call.

I cold steeped 6 bags of this over night in the fridge. My cup this morning was dull. The mint is weak and the chocolate barely shows up at the end after the mint has done most of it’s thing. If I focus really hard I can imagine Andes mints, but just barely. Looking back at my last log of this tea and it was two years ago! Has this tea been sitting in my cupboard for two years? It’s totally possible, but I have only the vaguest recollection of it. Makes sense that the flavor would be dull now. Not sure if I can make it through a whole pitcher of this, but it may be the only chocolate mint I have right now. Tea dilemmas!

I think 3 minutes was understeeped. The flavor is underwhelming, will try again.

Who would have thought that one of my favorite Holiday teas this season would come from Trader Joe’s? It’s a bold black tea with rich flavors of chocolate and mint that far surpasses my taste for peppermint hot chocolate. Perfect for those Winter days when the weather outside is frightful, but when the fire is so delightful!