Florence

After yesterdays confusion and euphoria with new teas, then the stress of evaluation thrown in, today is going to be much slower and deliberate.
I appreciate SimplyJenW who is helping me round out my “Tour de Harney.” First of all, I would not have bought this. I am a bit of a traditionalist, I enjoy courses in a meal separate. I dont like foods getting too close on my plate unless it is by design or recipe. I don’t really care for coffee flavored tea, I would rather just have coffee if I am in the mood. The same goes for cocoa and tea. I love them both and know full well a piece of dark chocolate and a cup of black tea are a divine combination, but I like them to compliment each other on their own, not mixed together. All this is to say, I have avoided chocolate flavored teas until now. This may seem odd, but it is just how my tastes have grown over the years. Thank goodness for Steepster, and friends like SimplyJenW, OUR beloved QuiltGuppy, KiTT and so many others who willingly share to help expand our tastes. Every sip of this, I have to do a double take to see if it is in fact tea or cocoa. I can imagine this would be excellent for a cold winters night, rather than a hot summer day, but it is good all the same. Dry it smelled of a chocolate bar. Steeped, it smells just like cocoa with warmed milk or cream. The Hazelnut is subtle, just barely there. It seems well balanced, not too much of anything (a Harney trademark from my standpoint) and is a comforting cup.
I like this and honestly expected not to. I will however plan to get some and have it on hand for the hounds of winter. Good as it is, I will enjoy it more in a traditional setting. :)
Thanks SimplyJenW. You changed my mind about this one.

Tonight is probably not the best evening to even begin compairing or complaining of tea. It is a zombie night and I am enjoying the sound of rain and a dark and delicious cup, or two, of chocolate teas.
Florence is my second variant tonight and sadly, I like it best.
The black tea is exquisite and I would swear it is a milk chocolate I taste. Generally I dislike most chocolate and milk chocolate just plain creeps-me-out. Who knows why but I enjoy baking with it. Ask me to make a chocolate cake and it’s all yours. Pour me a cup of this tea and just try to pull it away… you’ve got yourself a fight!
This tea was well worth the drive to Seattle to pick up… yes, and even the crowds of touristy shoppers. :)

This wonderful sample comes my way of the lovely VariaTEA. Thank you so much! ♥

This is just….wow. I’m blown away, to be honest. This is absolutely delicious! Reminds me a LOT of my favourite tea of all time, Choconut Oolong by DT. I find the latter to be slightly more chocolatey and reminiscent of Nutella – maybe the licorice enhances it, which doesn’t seem to be found here – but this comes pretty darn close. This is a near perfect balance of rich chocolate and hazelnut, nothing more and nothing less. And it works wonderfully.

I was hoping this would satisfy my craving for nutella on toast (or croissant, or waffle, or…anything. What doesn’t go with nutella?) The flavors were subtle; the chocolate and hazelnut were mildly there, but it was lacking that certain something.

Then I added milk and sugar, which smoothed it out and enhanced the flavors a bit, but still didn’t result in that “pow!” that I was hoping for. I guess it’s just not that kind of tea, and that’s ok; now that I know what it’s all about I can accept it for what it is. And it was a nice cup. Thank you to whatshesaid for the sample!

Brew temp was 208

It’s in the water.

So many times I read how important quality water is for good tea. My parents neighbor-who knows less about tea than me-was going on about it this weekend. Myself, I have been using filtered water for so long, I can’t remember drinking tea made with straight tap water. So there I am at my parents house making this new tea for dessert last night and something was not quite right.

It was the water.

Unfiltered tap water that I had grown up on and thought tasted pretty good was overpowering this wonderfully aromatic and sweet tea I had just bought earlier in the afternoon. I could taste the potential here, but rather than enjoying the tea, I couldn’t wait to get home and try it with better water.

I’ve been looking for a dessert tea to have besides masala chai (which I enjoy, but not every night) and mint chocolate tea-which doesn’t go with everything and I get tired of anyway.

This is one of those teas that I knew as soon as I smelled the dry leaf, I would love it. It smells just like you would expect-of hazelnut and chocolate. This tea tastes almost like coffee to me. At least what I think I remember coffee tastes like as I have never really been a coffee drinker. It’s smooth and kind of heavy, it’s hard to believe it’s straight and translucent. Zero bitterness. Liquor is a nice shade of chestnut. As advertised, it tastes like chocolate and hazelnut. The flavoring is so natural. It’s really sweet and rich with nothing added. I imagine it would be exceedingly decadent with soy milk/cream and sugar added-which I will have to try soon. Water problem solved

Masala chai has some serious competition here.

Tea #21 from Traveling Tea Box C

I’m starting to wind down on the box, and I’m hoping to fully finish up this weekend. I’ll have it out early next week in any case.

Can I preface this by saying, I love hazelnuts. Cookies, biscotti, panna cotta, semifreddo. You name it, I’m there. Especially semifreddo. Oh my god. What I don’t like is the hazelnut flavoring used in coffee. Ever. It’s too overwhelming.

So. This tea. Hazelnut in a drink has been redeemed! Instead of being a punch of hazelnut to the face, it takes your hand and wanders with you.

This definitely isn’t Nutella in a cup. I don’t even know if I’d go so far as to call this a dessert tea, either. It has kind of an understated decadence, though. It’d probably hit the dessert mark with milk and sugar. But it wouldn’t be this then. And this is pretty outstanding on it’s own.

What this is is a really subtle, tasty cup of dark cocoa and hazlenut on the back of a smooth black tea. It’s a nice natural chocolateyness, a little like unsweetened dark chocolate shavings. The hazelnut is perfect; it’s nutty and sweet and adds a wonderful layer of nuance.

I don’t think this tea is perfect, but it evokes some wonderful feelings.

I bought some of Harney’s teas from Yssah, since I only wanted to try about an ounce of some of them, rather than buy many ounces of each. thanks, Yssah! I love small amounts of tons of tea! This one immediately reminded me of the Harney’s I had the other day: Valentine’s. They are both chocolate but this one was supposed to have more of a hazelnut flavor that I didn’t really find. The only way I could tell that this one was hazelnut was that it was slightly less sweeter than the lovely milk chocolate flavor that Valentine’s has. I’m a bit disappointed, since I LOVE Adagio’s hazelnut flavor and sometimes wake up craving that one! So this would be tasty if you don’t expect more of a hazelnut flavor.

Another tea from the Doulton gift, the second of the two I picked myself. I think it’s also the last one I hadn’t tried yet. I think. Not sure. I don’t have much in the way of a general view of the tea situation at the moment. All I know is that I’m halfway through the Lockdown Conditions I set, and that it doesn’t seem to be making much of a dent in the holdings. I’ll probably have to do a double of that or some such. I can deal with that. It seems like it’s going pretty fast at the moment. But that was a tangent.

Back on track, we have this tea that has received absolute rave reviews on the site so I’m very very curious about it and not a little nervous of getting disappointed. I have such high expectations of it now.

Unlike the leaves which smells primarily of hazelnuts and chocolate, the aroma of the finished cup is a more tea-y sort of sweet. Oh it’s still very chocolate-y and not so much with the hazelnut, but the sweetness is not only chocolate.

Hmmm. That was unexpected. The aroma made me think I’d get some sort of viscous liquid like for example milk is, but that didn’t really happen. I just got a sip of… tea. The flavour isn’t nearly as strong as I had thought it would be. This always happens to me, though, so I don’t hold much to it.

After a few more sips, it’s easier for me to figure out what it actually tastes like. I need that first one to realise that I’m not going to get chocolate milk here, however much the aroma might try to convince my brain otherwise. Now, with a more reasonable tasting sensation, I’m picking up a lot of hazelnut and a slightly bitter astringency of the tea underneath, but not really a whole lot of chocolate, except if I really look for it.

As it is right now, it’s a very nice tea. Nicely balanced with the nuts and the chocolate and the tea base underneath, but I think it could be better. That, though, I believe is result of my brewing. It seems a little under-done somehow. I’m just not sure yet whether it’s leaf amount of steep time or both that needs tweaking here. I guess I’ll just have to give one of them a go the next time I have this.

Tea #10 from Traveling Tea Box C

This one took a little while to warm up to, but once I realized all the sugar had settled to the bottom (I usually use an infuser mug, and it’s been that kind of a day) it improved markedly. Actually, I really like this one! I don’t really get Nutella, but it does taste deliciously chocolatey!

Okay, this one is staying here! :)

Last week the tin of Florence suffered a tragedy. Cat Merle, who has a very muscular and somewhat unruly tail, knocked it and a few of its mates off the shelf onto the floor and of COURSE the Florence had the only tin that came open and spilled on the floor. Fully 1/3 of its volume lost.

So tonight we are holding a memorial service for the cups that shall never be consumed. I am adding half and half and a touch of amber agave and…

Getting the hazelnut very assertively at the beginning, the chocolate at the back of my mouth. I like the agave – it’s not leaving the kind of sour aftertaste that sugar, even raw sugar, can do.

I read some of the older reviews and next time I’m going to try it iced, unsweetened. Maybe plain, then with half and half.