Saturday, November 20, 2010

Much More Mediocre Than I Had Hoped: Chocolate Raspberry Bliss Tea Underwhelms!



The Good: Intriguing aroma, Slight raspberry flavor, Does not taste bad. . .
The Bad: Does not taste especially like chocolate, Caffeine free
The Basics: Looks good, but doesn't taste at all like chocolate and only mildly like raspberry, making Chocolate Raspberry Bliss a bit of a let down from Celestial Seasonings.


For those who might not (yet) follow my reviews, every year for the last three years, I have taken a trip out to Las Vegas, Nevada and on my way home I stop through Boulder, Colorado. Among many other things I am sure Boulder has to lure people in, there is the Celestial Seasonings Tea factory and gift shop. This has rapidly become one of my favorite places on Earth and part of that is because the shop there has the greatest selection of Celestial Seasoning teas in the world. This often means I have boxes of tea before they hit the average supermarket, the Celestial Seasonings website or the internet!

It was there that I found an exciting new tea, Chocolate Raspberry Bliss, one of the herbal teas by Celestial Seasonings that the company is marketing toward the dessert crowd. I had never seen, heard, nor tasted Chocolate Raspberry Bliss tea, but it quickly became one of the teas from the trip that I was most excited about buying and trying. I suppose I ought to have learned my less on from Chocolate Caramel Enchantment tea, but I did not. Sadly, this tea smells more like chocolate than tastes like it.

Basics

Chocolate Raspberry Bliss is a 100% Natural Herbal Tea from Celestial Seasonings. This carob-based tea is 100% natural, but is made from ingredients that do not naturally have any caffeine. Marketed to taste just like chocolate and raspberry, Chocolate Raspberry Bliss gets the flavor half right.

Chocolate Raspberry Bliss comes in Celestial Seasonings's standard stringless tea bags, which are paired together with easy to separate perforations that allow one to separate the tea bags. When I make pots of tea, I tend to use two bags and leave them connected. A box of Chocolate Raspberry Bliss comes with ten pairs (20 individual) of tea bags.

Ease Of Preparation

Chocolate Raspberry Bliss is your standard black tea as far as the preparation goes. A single tea bag will make the standard 8 oz. coffee mug worth of tea. The tea bag could be reused and make a second cup of Chocolate Raspberry Bliss with no significant change loss in flavor. It certainly does not taste either more like chocolate with the second brewing, but it doesn't taste less like chocolate or have the vaguely fruity taste of raspberry, either. The second cup, naturally, does not come out as strong as the first, but provided the first steeping was not more than the recommended upper recommended steeping time of six minutes, a second use can come out with about 3/4 strength. I tend to make my tea using a 32 oz. steeping tea pot and that works well for both a first and second steeping.

To prepare Chocolate Raspberry Bliss tea, bring a pot of water to a boil and pour it over the tea bags. This tea takes four to six minutes to steep and when the water is actually boiling, it comes out strong at the four minute point without needing any additional time. After six minutes, though, the flavor does not concentrate any more so there is no benefit to letting it steep longer than that.

Taste

Chocolate Raspberry Bliss is a bit of a disappointment, though not the worst one I have ever faced from Celestial Seasonings or life in general. Chocolate Raspberry Bliss has a wonderful aroma. It smells just like chocolate and raspberry and with their eyes closed, half my family guessed I was having hot cocoa by the smell when I attempted some objective testing. The smell sets the consumer up for a fruity, chocolatey experience and it is easy for one to get their hopes up from the scent alone.

Unfortunately, when it comes to tasting the tea, the beverage falls down. And it falls pretty far and pretty fast. There is no real chocolate flavor in this tea. It smells like chocolate, but the taste is far more woody than sweet and there is actually a strangely watery taste to this tea, like no matter how strong it is, one can still taste a slightly metallic water flavor to the tea. As for the raspberry, there is a vaguely fruity aftertaste to the tea that is sweet and might as well be considered raspberry. The raspberry comes out well in the scent and there is a fruity enough aftertaste to give consumers the benefit of the doubt on it being raspberry.

With a teaspoon of sugar, the raspberry flavor comes alive and is actually quite good. It is distinct and has the slight tang of raspberries. Unfortunately, the rest of the flavor becomes more smoky and even less like chocolate. Outside adding chocolate sauce to this tea, I have found nothing that makes it taste more like chocolate, not even adding a splash of milk!

Cold, without sugar or milk, the Chocolate Raspberry Bliss has a flat, bitter, dry taste to it that is unlike either chocolate or raspberry, but is an awful lot like chicory.

This tea is lessened by its inability to carry the flavor it touts as its dominant one.

Nutrition

This tea has more ingredients than most of Celestial Seasonings's teas and people who simply must know all of the ingredients before purchasing something are encouraged to check out the manufacturer's website. The top three ingredients, though, are roasted carob, roasted chicory and roasted barley, which accounts for much of this tea's flavor, both as a generic tea flavor and as pretty much anything other than chocolate. There is nothing unpronouncable in this tea and it is 100% natural. It is noted that this tea is gluten free, so that might make it appealing to the anti-glutenites. The oddest thing has to be that the final ingredient is dark chocolate, so the tea ought to have some chocolate flavor to it, but it does not seem to carry that at all.

In terms of nutrition, like most teas, Chocolate Raspberry Bliss is not something you want to try to live on. An 8 oz. mug of this tea provides nothing of nutritional value to the drinker; there are no calories (save what one adds from sugar or milk), no fat, caffeine, sodium, nor protein.

Storage/Clean-up

Chocolate Raspberry Bliss tea is very easy to clean up after - the tea bags may be disposed in the garbage, or composted if you have a good garden and/or compost pile. The tea itself is a very dark tea and will stain most fabrics. Consult your fabric guide if you spill any on your light clothes. Outside that, mugs and steeping pots clean out easily from this tea.

Overall

Chocolate Raspberry Bliss is a great idea that Celestial Seasonings simply did not get quite right. Still, it is not an unpleasant tea and while I won't recommend it, there are worse things one could have with a cheesecake.

For other teas by Celestial Seasonings, please check out my reviews of:
Almond Sunset
Saphara Gen Mai Cha
Saphara Blackcurrant Hibiscus

5/10

For other food and drink reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2009, 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.



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