Tisane Information:
Leaf Type: Rooibos
Where to Buy: Tisano
Tisane Description:
If you love chocolate cupcakes this is the tea for you… In the 19th Century Dutch settlers in South Africa created an herbal infusion from the Rooibos bush. It is a caffeine-free natural source of antioxidants with a milky and nutty flavor profile. Combining Rooibos, Vanilla Beans and Cacao Tea creates a creamy chocolate dessert in a cup minus the calories, sugar, fat and packed with antioxidant goodness.
Learn more about this tisane here.
Taster’s Review:
Oh. My. Goodness. This is so good. Definitely one of the very best rooibos blends I’ve ever had. And it’s all because of the chocolate, baby!
To steep this tisane, I used 195°F water and steeped it for 12 minutes. I used 2 tsp. of leaf for 12 ounces of water. This produced one serious cup of YUM!
Just as the description above suggests, this tastes like a liquefied chocolate cupcake! The rooibos adds just enough of a nutty, sweet flavor to give this just the right cake-ish flavor. I like that I can taste just a bit of the natural nutty tones of the rooibos without this tasting too much like rooibos. You can taste those nutty flavors but it doesn’t taste so distinctly like rooibos.
The vanilla is a strong note too – sweet, creamy and luscious! YUM! For those of you who like the flavor of a latte but want to limit your dairy intake, the vanilla in this gives it just the right creamy, almost latte-ish like flavor that you don’t need to add milk or cream.
But the real star of this cup is – not surprisingly! – the cacao shells! By now, those that have been reading my reviews enough should be aware of how much I love cacao shells. I think that they’re the perfect component to a chocolate tea. It adds a better chocolate flavor to a cup than cacao nibs do, better than chocolate flavoring oil does, and much better than chocolate chips/chunks do. Cacao shells are the KEY to a chocolate-y tea!
And this is chocolate-y! Rich and decadent and absolutely SINFULLY chocolate. So yum! The vanilla gives it just enough of a “milk chocolate” sort of flavor and enough of a creamy texture to satisfy that craving of a chocolate-y dessert (like that aforementioned chocolate cupcake!)
I don’t usually offer a “highly recommended” recommendation to a rooibos blend … but this one has earned it. I highly recommend this one! Two thumbs up!
