This robust tea is made from two simple, quality ingredients: black tea leaves and roasted cocoa beans. This tea has everything that is good about hot bold black tea, hot chocolate, and coffee. The black tea gives enough fresh tartness to keep the chocolate from being too sweet, and the roasted cocoa beans add a decadent smoothness that hints at the rich and nutty tones of coffee. No matter how long I steeped the leaves, the blend stays strong and smooth, with no bitter astringency.
Many black teas in people’s cupboards are English breakfast blends. I feel like My Morning Blend could easily be called American Breakfast, with all that Hershey chocolate flavor over the top of a welcoming tea brew (if we Americans weren’t already drinking coffee as the breakfast beverage of choice, that is).
I recently tried some cocoa shell tea for the first time, and found it to be a tasty, unique experience, a mix of sweet and salty, almost like chocolate-drizzled popcorn balls. Cocoa shells are well and good, but as a tea-lover, sometimes I just need that black tea undertone. My Morning Blend from The NecessiTeas was the perfect fix.
This blend takes milk like a champ, only growing more delicious and creamy with rich chocolate and toasty tea notes. This blend should be an essential on everyone’s tea shelf for those mornings when you want a cup that feels like putting on your favorite sweater and smells like your favorite cookies baking in the oven.
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: The NecessiTeas
Description:
If you are looking for a wake-me-up, perk-me-up cup in the morning, that’s off the beaten path of coffee, look no further. This strong black tea has the smoothness of chocolate, and the boldness of roasted cocoa beans. Doctor it as you would a cup of coffee, with milk and sugar to start off your day!
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Jump Start You Day with This Blend from Adagio Teas
Jump start your car with a blast of electricity. Jump start your brain and your day with this high caffeine cuppa! For tea lovers everywhere, it’s no secret that mate tea is a powerful pick-me-up, and often cited as a great alternative to coffee. Well Jump Start blend from Adagio teas has toasted mate and so much more.
There’s not just mate, there’s traditional black tea in the blend as well, a staple of every breakfast blend around. But let’s take this caffeine level a step further: kola nuts. Kola nuts are caffeine-containing tree nuts, previously used as an ingredient in sodas, hence where we get the term “cola.” So there’s caffeine from the mate, from the black tea, and even from the kola nut inclusion. This tea should come with a warning, like roller coasters: don’t brew this tea if you have a heart condition. You’ll be rocketing out of your socks in no time!
So how do all of these ingredients taste? The toasted mate brings roasty, earthy, dry hay notes, which serve as a compliment to the more traditional boldness of the black tea. With additions like smooth, sweet cocoa nibs, and warm, spicy cinnamon bark, it’s hard not to imagine the kola nuts adding their own kind of cola sweetness. I brewed this blend black, how I take most of my tea, but it is bold enough to hold up its flavor, even if softened with a bit of milk.
This will be an amazing tea for those of you who just can’t seem to get enough caffeine. Skip your espresso-laced red-eye cold brew coffee, and just brew a cup of Jump Start instead!
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Black/Herbal
Where to Buy: Adagio Teas
Description: Mate, Kola, and Black tea make up this well-caffeinated blend to make your mornings deliciously efficient.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
A Grown Up Chocolate Experience: Cacao Tea from Mi Cacao
Chocolate tea can be a decadent latte, or a great dessert-replacement. But most of the chocolate teas I’ve tried, have black tea or honeybush tea as a base, mixed with chocolate chips and chocolate flavors. This tea, Cacao Tea from Mi Cacao, is a completely different chocolate experience.
You may have heard about cascara tea at your local coffee shop, which is a brew made from the husks of the coffee cherries. Similar to cascara tea, cacao tea is an herbal brew made with cacao shells. These shells are the exterior pod that hold the cacao nibs, the essential chocolate-making ingredient. But these shells still have plenty of flavor.
I brewed this once straight, and once with milk. On its own, this tea does taste like chocolate, but it is almost salty and brothy, like a nutty chocolate popcorn tea blend. The blend is enhanced by milk, making the blend feel creamier and sweeter, and more like the decadent chocolate teas with which I’m more familiar.
Do you remember liking the taste of coffee ice cream, but having a strong aversion to coffee itself? But then you tried coffee on its own out of necessity or curiosity, and you came to like the strong brew on its own? Cacao Tea feels like the chocolate equivalent. It’s easy to like sugary, chocolatey hot chocolate, but cocoa tea might be more of an acquired taste. But perhaps as your tastes or moods change, you’ll be looking for a chocolate brew that’s a little less sweet and more potent. That’s when Cacao Tea will be the perfect choice.
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Herbal
Where to Buy: Mi Cacao
Description:
Herbal chocolate tea made from the shell of the cacao bean. Cacao Tea is 100% cocoa based. It is completely natural, preservative free, and without any artificial flavors or starches. Sugar-free. Organic. Gluten-Free. Vegan-friendly.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Ganymede Matcha Tea Blend by MoongleamTeaShoppe
I wasn’t sure how to prepare this tea at first. It’s matcha, so you should be able to just put it in the hot water and shake/whisk it up, right? Well, no, because there are lumps in it as well. The green lumps (I thought they might just be matcha powder caked together that would come apart in the cup) turned out to be bits of citrus peel coated in matcha, which made me realize that there was less matcha in my cup than I at first thought, so I just went ahead and dumped the rest of the sample in too.
When dry, this tea was green, but once steeped it turned a super-muddy brown. By that I mean that it was not just brown but also opaque even before I added milk. I’m going to assume this was from the chocolate. I could taste a hint of chocolate in the tea, although it was hidden way down under the mint still.
There is some bitterness to this tea, but I think that’s from the mint (because it tasted to me like mint tea that has been steeped a bit too long) rather than from the matcha. So next time I’d be more careful not to steep it quite so long. I was trying to give the citrus peel a chance to wake up, but I don’t think it stood a chance against the mint anyway.
Once I added some sugar and lots of milk, it tasted primarily of mint-chocolate, but still very heavy on the mint. I could hardly taste the matcha itself at all because of the mint, which could be a good thing if you don’t especially like matcha flavor but still want the energy that comes from it. With the addition of milk, the citrus became almost nonexistent– although not totally gone– kind of like a ghost. Sometimes I thought I caught a hint of it but I’m not totally sure and it wasn’t a very substantial hint anyway.
Looking at the ingredients list, I notice that there was black tea in this as well. I didn’t really notice it (as I said, before steeping everything was coated in matcha and afterward everything tasted strongly of mint). Maybe there wasn’t very much of it, because it certainly didn’t have a very strong presence in this tea blend.
So in conclusion, I’d say that if you like strongly minty mint chocolate matcha, this could be great for you. It would also be great as a functional breakfast tea because it has all the refreshing qualities of mint plus the caffeine from the matcha. I’m not sure I’d buy this particular blend but I sure had fun with the sample!
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: Moongleam Tea Shoppe
Description
The rich, earthy flavor of matcha meets the sweetness of cocoa, mint, and orange peel.
The flavors combine wonderfully to create a wonderful interplay.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Uper Fagu Darjeeling Oolong from The Tea Shelf
I’ve not come across many Oolongs from Darjeeling in the years I’ve been drinking tea, but the ones I have tried have always been something special. This one is no exception.
It starts with the leaf, which in appearance reminds me a lot of a first flush darjeeling (although it’s actually a second) crossed with a very fresh white peony. The are a high predominance of downy silver buds, some verging more on silver or pale green, plus some brown-ish-copper leaves. The scent is sweet and lightly jasmine.
Initially, the taste is subtle and fairly mineral, in the way that some lighter or green oolongs can be. There’s a distinctive citrus flavour in the mid-sip – it reminds me most of grapefruit, with a slightly sharp/sour tang. There’s also some of the muscatel flavour you’d typically associate with a second flush darjeeling, and the pairing is an unusual and inspiring one. As it cools. a hint of dark chocolate starts to emerge, although it’s mostly confined to the very end of the sip and it doesn’t linger long. 
Despite the scent, I didn’t detect any floral flavours in the actual tea, which is a small relief because it’s already quite busy. In terms of mouthfeel, it’s lightly brisk but doesn’t cross over into astringency, despite being slightly drying on the palate.
I enjoyed this one. I’ve discovered that I like Oolongs from Darjeeling in general, and they often have some of the more unique flavour profiles. Mineral, grapefruit, and chocolate don’t sound like they should work together very well, but, somehow, they do. If you enjoy either Darjeeling or Oolong, this one is definitely worth a look.
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Oolong
Where to Buy: The Tea Shelf
Description
One of the finest oolongs of Darjeeling, the aroma of dark chocolate envelopes your senses, reminiscent of a cold wintry day! The leaves are springy with a moss like mosaic of silver and copper. The infusion shows another surprise with individual leaves clearly visible with bright colours of copper and mauve. The chocolate experience continues but now coupled with citrus and fruity notes. The steeped leaves give way to a gorgeous sunset yellow cup, which is very brisk on the palate with notes of jasmine and citrus, which linger on.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
