Cocoa Canela (Organic)

Well, just because I didn’t get my Cocoa Canela Eggnog Latte yesterday doesn’t mean I wasn’t still craving a cup of that lovely, Mexican Hot Chocolate tea – so that’s what I picked for my work tea this morning, and I just finished it off.

Carrying this to work was like navigating a minefield. It’s about +5C today after weeks of -10C to -20C type weather and there’s water and slush and slick little ice patches everywhere. I had to think REALLY HARD about where I walked: one miss step and I would have been sprawled on the ground covered in chocolate, and not in the fun way either.

It was definitely lovely taste wise: mostly chocolate with a splash of cinnamon and a lot of nutmeg. Warming, would be a good word for it. Unfortunately, the mate is doing nothing to wake me up and I still feel like absolute, sluggish/sleepy garbage – with a sore tooth and headache on top of it.

Seriously; WHY SO MUCH CHRISTMAS MUSIC!? And it’s not just here at Calendar Club anymore. Sobey’s started playing their Christmas music last night so I get to drown in carols all day now. Ugh!

My friend messaged me this morning in search of a tea that tastes like DAVIDs Pumpkin Chai. I just sent mine off last week but I recommended Grandma’s Pumpkin Pie and keeping an eye on DAVIDs web specials. If anyone has any other recommendations, I would love to hear them!

As for this tea, I have never tried this without milk prior to this cup. Surprisingly, it is still very good. It is reminiscent of an instant hot chocolate made in water. It has some nice warming spices thanks to the cinnamon and nutmeg and there is almost a berry-esque quality that I am quite enjoying. Though I still prefer this as a latte, I now know it can still be enjoyable on its own.

Today I used this to make my first latte ever! It was exciting, although I’m quite certain I screwed it up. It’s milky, chocolatey, cinnamony, and it has that roasty mate taste. It does leave a dusty feeling in my mouth that I’m not accustomed to.

It tasted alright, but I think there must be a better way to make this so that the chocolate chips melt completely. I feel tempted to read up on this and give it another go, but I shouldn’t be drinking it in the first place because I’m lactose intolerant, mildly allergic to soy and caffeine sensitive. It was an impulse buy. So far I’m not experiencing any of the self-inflicted symptoms, fingers-crossed that it stays that way.

Backlog from Friday night.

I’ve heard pretty good reviews about this one, especially from a coworker, so was pretty excited to try it out! The dry tea is definitely VERY cocoa-y, so much so that the other ingredients are rather difficult to distinguish, coated in a layer of cocoa dust. I brewed it up in a filter with slightly larger holes than usual (i.e. not a Finum brew basket) to allow the cocoa to actually make it into the tea. As I’ve heard from other people, this looked like hot chocolate when brewed up, as it was brown and opaque, and smelled like cocoa and cinnamon. I can’t remember specifics, but it smelled pretty good!

Unfortunately, the taste wasn’t quite what I wanted. I liked the cocoa-y base, and the roasted mate worked well here (as in, it wasn’t overpowering, and surprisingly, also wasn’t banana-flavoured! See my other reviews of roasted mate for an explanation of that…) However, the cinnamon wasn’t quite right for me. Apparently I’m a bit picky on cinnamon in teas – I adore DT’s Glitter & Gold, but disliked Hot Lips, and I found the cinnamon here to be more on the “red hot” side than the warm, soft sort of cinnamon I prefer. I really don’t know what exactly the difference is, perhaps it’s artificial cinnamon flavouring vs. actual cinnamon? Or different types of cinnamon?

Either way, this wasn’t bad, but it didn’t really do it for me. Perhaps it could work quite nicely if sweetened, but I’d rather now. However, this is a great concept, using cocoa in a tea blend (especially with mate), and I hope another tea comes out using this same idea!

This tea looks like it would have been used as a set for Star Trek (TOS). Very odd and desert like, saw similar land in Vegas. That was my first reaction to this tea and I’m not sure desert dry is the right appeal this tea wanted to make.

Appearances aside this tea has a weird cinnamon, cocoa and cola scent in it’s raw form. I don’t know where it’s from but I can smell cola cube sweets…bizarre!

Once steeped this tea is dark brown and has a spicy cinnamon and cocoa scent, not quite hot chocolate like but almost as rich.

Flavour is not as rich as it’s scent which is a personal sigh of relief from me, cocoa or mate that is too heavy and rich is disgusting. The cinnamon peaks through first before the deep cocoa balances out the two flavours and leaves a dry, sweet and spicy after taste. I think this is more of a winter and snow outside sort of tea as it’s a little warming and could be considered almost Christmasy.

This is too try for me but I can see what David’s Tea tried to do. Not terrible but just not my type of tea.

Apple cider! Without the apple? yummmm. Off to work now, running on just a few hrs sleep so I can’t really chat.
I love cinnamon and cocoa, and… this one just seems to work with the combo well. I shared it with a friend and she thought it was great as well!
Rating: 90

This is a new one that caught my eye – chocolate and yerba maté with a dash of cinnamon? Color me intrigued!

BoxerMama picked me up a sample of this when she made a recent DT run – bless her!

Now I’m pretty picky about chocolate in general. I’m a weird one – I don’t tend to crave it like many others do. So naturally I am very leery when it appears in tea. But this excited me. It’s not your regular black tea base. (Lately, I’ve been drawn to flavored guaysua and yerba maté.) There’s also some real chocolatey goodness here – cocoa nibs and powder, cinnamon and chocolate chips!

Brewed, this is the dirtiest tea I think I’ve ever drank. There’s a film of cocoa powder all over my mug! So if your into “neat” teas, this may not be for you.

The first few sips without any additions tasted like hot chocolate water. There was a nice balance of chocolate to cinnamon. I tend to be heavy handed with cinnamon, so this was pretty pleasing to me. Cocoa Canela got better with additions. A little rock sugar and I could start to see the potential. More rock sugar and a healthy dash of milk and it was pretty close to a lower calorie hot chocolate, but with a layer of cinnamon warmth.

DT is really killing me now because this is another tea that I will be adding to my next order. Grrrr! =D

I got this as a free sample when my replacement order arrived yesterday. (I had several items missing from a previous order, but DT sent the missing items and I scored three more samples.) I’m not normally one to enjoy super chocolate-y teas nor mate, but this blend has changed my mind. The flavor is bold, but not artificial, and yet not overpowering either. I taste a subtle cinnamon flavor too – maybe that helps balance the chocolate flavor. This is delightful and fun, although dusty. I had to wipe the teaspoon free of the tea dust, but that’s a small inconvenience for bliss! :)

Licorice notes. Strong chocolate in the background. Creamy finish. Cinnamon taste compliments the flavour very well.

As I predicted, this tisane does not do very well on a second infusion. The flavour is noticeably diluted. This tisane is very powdery and a lot of the ingredients likely dissolve in the first brew.

Rating: 91

1 TB in a gourd with 250 mL water @ 98, drunk bare.

First, I gotta warm ya: the new ceramic mate gourd with bombilla at DavidsTea is a design FAILURE. It looks cute, but it gets WAYYYY too hot to touch. Seriously, there is no safe way to pick it up. The ceramic gets extremely hot. This could easily result in a bad scald.My hand has a slight burn from trying not to drop the damn thing.

The new Cocoa Canela mate blend, however, is quite good. Lots of cinnamon. Lots of chocolate. Some mate. Makes a very murky brew in the gourd, but that’s to be expected with the chcooclate and cinnamon. It’s a sweetish, mily chooclate flavour, and the cinnamon is fresh and penetrating.