Terry's Tea

I tried this the same time as Lupicia’s Chcoolate Orange, but I find I prefer this one. The chocolate tastes like dark chocolate which is nice, and it’s slightly bitter which is reminiscent of dark chocolate as well! It was overall an enjoyable tea, but not my favourite dessert tea. I’ll play around with it a bit before I rate it, but it’s at least 70.

I’m not a huge fan of hibiscus in my teas, so I think I’ll try steeping this for 3 minutes next time.

Tea #13 from HHTTB2

Once this is brewed up, it smells just like dark cocoa with a hint of orange!

The flavor is dark and cocoa-y, though the base itself isn’t terribly strong. The orange flavor comes through as very much candied orange rind flavor. And while the hibiscus doesn’t come through on the sip, the musty tartness is pervasive in the aftertaste. I’d be afraid to brew this longer in fear of popping the hibiscus into the sip.

Good, but not great.

Teabox B! When I saw this list of ingredients I was thinking “WHAT was Terry thinking?!?!” No, not the Terri who sent this for me to try (thank you!) but the Terry the blend is named for. Chocolate, hibiscus, orange, apple, rosehips?!? The chocolate and orange is weird enough of a combo for me. But I trust Bluebird and they have some really nice blends that I have sampled that I can’t wait to order… but I’m trying to hold off! After steeping for four minutes, the flavor really isn’t that bad. Maybe there wasn’t hibiscus in this teaspoon, but I didn’t taste any. There were equal hints of orange, chocolate all on a mild black tea base. I do wish Bluebird used a stronger black base, but that would probably take away from their awesome blend idea (usually better than this one.) There was also a taste that I had in The Tea Merchant’s Yunnan’s Fable pu-erh that had be thinking this was either pu-erh or had coconut but I was wrong. I liked this one more than I thought but I will leave the rest of this one in the teabox for someone else to try.

I could eat some chocolate right about now and it’s unusual I would crave it to begin with, I’m a savoury person over sweet most of the time.

In raw form it has a soured cocoa scent that is quite heavy on the rosehip. Hopefully it will taste nicer than it smells.

Once steeped it smells more chocolatey than before but it’s still missing the orange. Instead it smells sort of…musty and sour and old. I think it’s just the rosehip and cocoa combination but honestly it isn’t that pleasant.

Flavour is dark and rich with heavy tones from both the ceylon and chocolate but similar to it’s smell it also tastes sour. I’m struggling to find anything nice about a tea that’s dark rich and sour. It’s far from the chocolate orange drink I had imagined.

I’m stopping the review, this one is just not for me. I don’t even think I can finish it. Bleugh. Sorry Bluebird Tea Co, no rating for this.

Thanks again to Cavocorax for another awesome tea sample :D

Although I’m pretty sure I’ve found my perfect orange chocolate tea (a Butiki custom blend, Two Friends), I’m still curious to try others. Hence, this tea! I was a bit weirded out at first that it had hibiscus in it, but since I usually go for a pretty short infusion with blacks anyhow, I figured it wouldn’t cause too many problems. I seem to be right, as I can’t taste it at all. What I can taste is some tasty orange, with a background of dark chocolate. The orange is a little… brighter? Than in the Butiki blend… maybe that’s the hibiscus at work? It’s not a bad thing, just different. The chocolate base also isn’t as obvious, but I am definitely enjoying the lack of astringency here (though 2 minute infusions tame even the worst of teas. Not that I think this one couldn’t have handled 3-4 minutes).

Overall, not a bad cup of tea, but it wouldn’t be my first choice to fill any tea desire niche.

This is one of the samples that came with my first Bluebird order. I’ve tried a good few chocolate teas now, but this is my first chocolate orange experience. It’s a combination I like in reality (Terry’s are a favourite of mine), so I’m interested to see how the tea version works out.

The dry leaves smell just like the chocolate bar. There’s the initial milky smoothness, and then the zesty zing of orange. I’m not 100% sure on the ingredients, but it looks like some kind of petal (maybe marigold?), pieces of orange and orange zest, something that looks like a hazelnut shaving, chocolate pieces, and maybe a small amount of hibiscus and rosehip, as well as black tea. All I know at this point is that if it tastes anything like it smells I’ll be too happy to care!

And it does, so I’m over the moon! The liquor, without milk, is a red-brown colour. With milk, it turns the colour of a latte or a mug of hot chocolate. The first thing I can taste is creamy, milky chocolate, followed swiftly by the slight tang of orange. It is just like drinking a bar of orange flavoured chocolate. Creamy, chocolatey, orangey. It sounds simple, and it is, but it’s so, so yummy and not at all artificial tasting. I’m really glad to have tried this one — thank you Bluebird!

Tea #7 from the Here’s Hoping TTB

It isn’t often I say this about an orange flavored tea, but this wasn’t bad, and that is saying a lot because I really hate orange. I liked the combination of dark chocolate and orange, which is also a first for me because normally that is a combination that just doesn’t seem to turn out well. I wish there had been more of this, I would like to have been able to play around with this more. My cup turned out really weak, even though I only used 6 oz of water. This could quite possibly be an orange tea I could really enjoy. I consider it an added bonus that I really liked the quality of chocolate used as well, I’m really picky about chocolate teas.

Looks like I’m really making progress on the I hate all things citrus front!

This tea won’t be continuing on, I finished off the last little bit.

So, I received this in a sample. (I wish the samples were a big bigger to be able to experiment with how to take it, etc., but that’s another story.) The smell is nice citrus with the mix of chocolate. With one of my favorite chocolate treats being those orange chocolate things (I cannot recall the names of them), I was excited for this. However, after this was steeped, I was a bit depressed to it. I couldn’t really get any taste out of this. And after I added milk to it, but it started to taste a bit off? It was a bit better when it got cold, though, not by much. The directions on the website were a bit vague for how to brew as well. (Or I thought so at least). I might request another sample of this at some point when I have the money so I can try it again and alter a few things when I have money, but I’m sad to say I was disappointed in this.

This one is tasty and I would consider ordering this one every so often for the cupboard. I am wondering if they’ve reblended this one after reading some other tea notes on it? The chocolate and orange complement each other and are very mellow. It would be nice if they were a bit less mellow. They’ve managed to achieve a milk chocolate flavour. I did check the ingredients because I could have sworn they had used fermented orange peel and it doesn’t appear that’s there case.

Had to sneak in this Terry’s Chocolate Orange inspired tea during one of the days this month where I finished off my advent teas early in the day…

I couldn’t find a Terry’s Chocolate Orange this year, so it definitely feels a little bit like I’m missing out on a Christmas tradition – but this was a very tasty cuppa and it’s preettttyyyy darn close to the real thing in terms of taste (more orange though) so I guess it’s as good as I’ll get this year!