Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: MarketSpice
Product Description:
Popular all year round, this Chinese Hunan black tea combines the flavorings of Chocolate, Mint and Raspberry. A tea that truly satisfies your sweet tooth!
Taster’s Review:
I was tempted to save this tea review until it was closer to the holiday, but, I decided that I wanted to do it a little earlier, because not only is it a fantastic tea, it’s something that I think you should get NOW so that you have it for the holiday. This would be the perfect tea to serve to your holiday guests!
The scent alone is enough to make your taste buds do the happy dance. Dry, this aromatic tea gives off notes of mint, chocolate and berry. The combination of these three scents is brilliant. YUM! Brewed, the tea has a little less of the raspberry scent, and a little more of the chocolate. In fact, as I brewed this tea, my daughter had a couple of friends over, and they asked if I had baked chocolate muffins! Yeah… that’s what it smells like.
The flavor is more of a medley of these three flavors, as well as the distinctive flavor of the Chinese Hunan tea. The black tea tastes rich and bold. It is a more mildly-tempered kind of tea compared to, say, an Assam, which while it is quite bold and malty (and delicious in its own right), it can be a rather temperamental tea and become bitter quite easily. This Hunan is much more forgiving, and maintains its bold, rich flavor without easily becoming bitter.
And this is a good thing, since you want to infuse this a little longer than you would an Assam to extract the most flavor from the other ingredients as possible. As I said before, the flavor of this tea tends to be more like a medley, like a well-integrated blend of chocolate, raspberry and mint. Each of the flavors seem pretty even in terms of strength of flavor. This is neither too minty, nor too strongly raspberry, nor composed of too much chocolate (although, this chocoholic would argue that there is no such thing as too much chocolate.)
This is such a delightful blend … a fantastic blend to serve whilst decorating the holiday tree, or just enjoying the company of family and friends.
