LA-based Chado Tea reached out to me to try their teas. I’ve seen them when I attended the Los Angeles Tea Festival back when I lived in SoCal.
Chado Tea’s carry an impressive assortment of different teas to cover all their bases. I wanted to give them a fair shot, so I sorted their massive catalog by best sellers and got Mauritius BOP. Then I took a look at their turmeric teas and selected a fun one, Organic Turmeric Truffle. I have been loving turmeric blends lately and they the most turmeric tea variety I’ve seen so far!
Mauritius BOP from Chado Tea
I was surprised to see a Mauritius BOP, a broken leaf tea (BOP means Broken Orange Pekoe) in their bestseller list, but the user reviews sounded promising.
To my surprise, the leaf smells heavy like vanilla with a bit of fruit.
I used 3 grams of leaf (which magically was 1 teaspoon) steeped in 8oz/250ml/1 cup at 190F/ 87c water for 2.5 minutes.
I highly recommend a fine filter as the broken leaf will escape. My fine mesh stainless steel basket filter didn’t catch all the tea bits.
Mauritius BOP tastes of creamy vanilla, a bit of dark malt, and a tannic citrus finish. This pekoe has a bit of astringency to dry the throat but is very drinkable as is. A splash of oat milk removes the tannic finish and it goes for a full creamy tea making it even better. I’d dig this as a base for boba tea or for any blends, especially a chai.
Overall, Mauritius BOP is a tasty, inexpensive, morning wake me up or afternoon milk tea. Despite my owlsnoot oolong/white/puer drinker ways, I can see this tea having a place in my stash.
Organic Turmeric Truffle from Chado Tea
I had a really hard time picking a turmeric blend from Chado Teas – all of them looked good. I went with this Organic Turmeric Truffle as it had puer, as well as fond memories a decade ago of a chocolate orange puer tea I liked. Organic Turmeric Truffle is a blend of, “Organic Orange peel, organic cacao nibs, organic pu erh, organic turmeric, organic pepper whole, nat chocolate flavor, nat blood orange flavor.”
They aren’t kidding about the orange peel, this tea blend seems it is mostly that. I shook my bag and dug around, and it is still mostly peels.
Organic Turmeric Truffle does smell like a Terry’s Chocolate Orange, my favorite chocolate gift to get on Christmas.
I used 7 grams (2 teaspoons-ish) at 200F/ 93c for a 5 minute infusion, which I felt had the best flavor. This is a chunkyboi so I use more leaf. Because of the heavy orange peel ratio, this tea brews up quite light.
The longer I steeped Organic Turmeric Truffle, the less orange dominate this tea becomes. It is orange, bit peppery and turmeric spice, some earthy, with a chocolatey finish. I detected no funky puer notes that sometimes plagues puer blends. The aftertaste is more orange. Overall, so much orange flavor!
If you love orange teas, Organic Turmeric Truffle is more of your thing. Organic Turmeric Truffle likely would work well iced, though too much orange to add milk (unless orange milk is a thing?). I was hoping to taste more chocolate and ripe puer notes.
(teas provided for review)
