I need to start off with a bit of a warning. I enjoy eating unsweetened 100% pure dark chocolate. You know, that stuff in the baking aisle your mom kept in the fridge that you tried eating as a kid because it was chocolate and discovered that real chocolate with nothing else in it tastes like bitter dirt. Yep, that’s the stuff. I eat that almost daily . . . for pleasure. I keep a bar in the top drawer of my desk at work as an afternoon treat. I have a bag of brewing cacao in my tea drawer that I enjoy pretty much as often as I do tea. (No, its absolutely nothing like hot chocolate.) So my perceptions of bitter and chocolate may not match the average person.
So, onto In the Mood for Love.
What can I say, its black tea. I don’t detect chocolate at all. Or malt for that matter. Actually, what does malt taste like anyway? I honestly have no clue. I had a chocolate malt once. It tasted exactly like every other chocolate milkshake I have ever had.
I don’t taste sweet. Given the fact that I have avoided anything containing any type of sugar at all for almost 7 years, I am pretty sensitive to the whole sweet thing. Carrots actually make me sick at my stomach because they are so sweet. There is none of that here at all.
On the first steep I detected no astringency or bitterness (note my bitter warning above however). It seems like a basic black tea with, as far as I can tell, no offensive qualities. As things cooled, I did notice a tiny bit of astringency show up, but it was pretty mild.
On the second steep there was still a slight hint of that astringency there, but never seemed to be more than just a hint
This is the second keemun I have tried. I was not a fan of the first one. I would be more likely to drink this one but there’s a lot of other straight black teas out there I would prefer.
Overall: decent but doesn’t stand out.
