The snap of chocolate squares breaking – the silkiness of a chocolate bar melting on your tongue – people flock to chocolate for good reason. If you’re reading this, the chances of you being a tea fan are pretty high. Over the past few years, the frequency of pairing chocolate with tea has increased, bringing together the luscious decadence of cacao with the robust tannins and flavor of tea leaves.

Mighty Leaf’s chocolate truffle collection features teas and infusions blended with cacao nibs or chocolate pieces for a guilt-free indulgence. Our friends at Vosges make a Matcha green tea chocolate bar. In the first case, tea plays first fiddle to the chocolate; in the second, the chocolate takes center stage. When pairing, you don’t want either the tea or the chocolate to overpower the other, but instead to complement and enhance. Either way, a blend of these two ingredients requires sleight of hand for the alchemy to ensure harmony of flavor.

This month we have partnered with Vosges, bringing our subscribers an exclusive promotion to pair their favorite Mighty Leaf Tea with their exotic chocolate bars.   You can go to the Vosges Haut Chocolate website and save 15% with the coupon code MLTEA at checkout.  The code expires January 4, 2010 and is not available with other offers.

Their mini chocolate bar library makes a perfect starting ground for doing a pairing. Our English Breakfast Organic with its bold tannins stands up the creamy hazelnut milk chocolate of the Gianduja bar. Bleu Peacock’s nutty vanilla notes symbiotically blend with the salted macadamia and coconut of the Woolloomooloo bar. Yunnan’sslight maltiness and delicate smoke draw out the hickory smoke of the almonds flecking deep milk chocolate in the Barcelona bar. Jade Organic’span-fired leaves accent the black sesame and hint of wasabi in the Black Pearl bar.

Any way you serve it, tea with chocolate is a winning combination. What are your favorite chocolate and tea pairings?

Sweet summer is here with bountiful heat.  Iced tea is always perfect for chilling out.  But we also invite you to explore other ways of incorporating tea into summer thirst quenchers.  A renaissance is occurring in the culinary world where tea is showing up for summer in unexpected places like on restaurant menus in cocktails or food .  We decided to put a spin on sangria for summer and developed a  Sangria Tea Collection with a variety of recipes to please any palate.

Enjoy our White Tea Sangria recipe below.  And be sure to check out our Sangria Tea Collection for more sangria tea recipes (both alcoholic and non-alcoholic) that also include Red Tea and Chamomile Citrus Sangria.

White Tea Sangria

1 750-ml Bottle Dry White Wine

3/4 cup Peach Schnapps

18 oz. Brewed Mighty Leaf White Orchard Tea (2 Tea Pouches)

1/4 cup sugar

4 Peaches, cubed

1/2 Honeydew, cubed

Stir first 4 ingredients in large pitcher until sugar dissolves.  Add peaches and honeydew.  Chill for a couple of hours.  Serve in wine glasses and spoon fruit over sangria in each glass.

-Serves 7 wine glasses.

I’m a tea drinker who enjoys tea with a little bit of milk.  Not only does it add a nice creamy texture to the tea, it also seems to take the bitter edge off, even without adding any sugar.  And I’m certainly not alone – by one estimate, 98% of British tea drinkers top off with the white stuff.

In my previous post I looked into some of the health benefits of green tea, and found the evidence to be somewhat limited. This isn’t so surprising, given the difficulty of determining the effects of one small part of a large, complex diet. So is it folly to try to understand how the combination of two foods, milk and tea, might affect health? Maybe so, but there is some evidence out there, and the news isn’t so good.

In 2007, Verena Stangl and colleagues published an article in the prestigious European Heart Journal entitled “Addition of milk prevents vascular protective effects of tea.” This study was based on a legitimate observation – if the British drink so much tea, why is cardiovascular disease still so prevalent? The researchers knew that tea causes relaxation of the aorta, a physiological mechanism associated with health (stiff blood vessels cause all sorts of problems).

They then devised a simple experiment – have subjects drink 1) straight tea, 2) a combination of 90% tea and 10% milk, or 3) hot water. By popping on an ultrasound probe on the subjects, they could then see what happened to the aorta. The experiment was small but the results were not – the folks who had milk in their tea had an aorta just as stiff as those who drank hot water. Those who had straight tea enjoyed a very relaxed aorta.

Sort of odd, don’t you think? Why would the simple act of adding milk to tea possibly annihilate the beneficial effects? Remember those catechins, especially the star player, epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG)? It would seem that EGCG is pretty promiscuous – it likes to hook up with whatever protein might be around. It especially likes proline, one of the amino acids.

Wouldn’t you know, one of the most abundant proteins in milk, β-casein, is studded with proline. Indeed, when Stangl looked at the various polyphenols in the tea, the EGCG level in the milk/tea combo was only 20% of the plain tea level.

Ok, so easy solution – just switch from cow milk to soy milk, right? Not so fast – glycinin and β-conglycinin, the major proteins in soy, also have a surplus of proline. Look for Stangl’s newest article, coming out soon in Atherosclerosis, showing that soy milk chomps those catechins every bit as much as cow milk.

Bottom Line: There’s a reason tea tastes less bitter after adding milk – all the catechins just got bound up! If you want to enjoy all the catechins you possibly can, best to have the tea like nature made it – straight up.

Like wine or chocolate tasting, tea tasting provides an opportunity to engage with the senses.  Discovering your favorite tea is a personal journey that will constantly surprise, as you encounter endless complexities of flavor, aroma and color. The more tea you taste, the more you will learn to appreciate the nuances between tea varieties and tea types.  And to get started, all you need are tea leaves and water.

Discovering the Elements:  Leaf, Aroma, Liquor and Flavor

Traditional tea tasting focuses on the appearance of the leaf, the aroma both before and after steeping, the color of the resulting infusion or liquor and the tea’s taste or flavor.  The elements noted below are components to keep in mind while tasting.  But remember that it’s your own individual tea tasting approach that makes the sensory experience of tea personal and memorable.

The Leaf:  Examining the leaf is telling. Is it rolled, twisted or a natural, flat leaf?  This and whether the leaf is whole or broken will impact the taste and body.

Aroma: Before steeping smell the leaves. Do they smell sweet, grassy, smoky etc.? Once infused, inhale the aroma and enjoy the bouquet. Does the smell appeal to you and whet your taste buds for sipping? Is it flowery, toasty, fruity, citrusy etc.? A tea’s nose may reveal not only quality but subtle flavors that the mouth might overlook.

Liquor (The Infused Tea):  The color of infused tea or liquor can vary in color. Look at the consistency of its color, and appearance of the liquid in a white cup. Depth of color will denote proper brewing time.

Flavor or Taste: After slightly cooling, slurp your tea to ensure the full flavor spreads out all over your tongue. Does the tea make a strong impression? Determine whether it has a full, medium or light or round body. Is it smooth? Does the flavor leave a lasting and memorable finish or dissipate after swallowing?  Think about elements of its flavor traits – is it floral, malty, vegetal, oceanic, grassy etc.?

How the tea feels in your mouth is important too. High quality tea exhibits briskness. Instead of flat tasting, briskness refers to the astringent or dry tasting affect tea has on tongue. This astringency is an important aspect to tea; it delivers that refreshing feeling.  Oversteeped tea can be too bitter, so make sure that you’ve steeped properly.  However, steeping times can also be a matter of personal taste and some tea drinkers prefer a stronger brew.