We love loose tea for many reasons, but especially for the nuances of flavor. Do you taste chocolate notes in your Birdsong Black tea? We do!

This tea grows an hour from Cali, Colombia. From the top of a ridge, the tea farm blankets the mountain down to the town of Bitaco. The farm sits at 6,000 feet above sea level, high in the Andean Mountains. Tea plants flourish in the volcanic soil, and the area’s unique terroir imparts a chocolatey aroma and flavor unlike any other black tea we know.

Brew a cup, and see if you detect chocolate notes in this Colombian black tea. We recommend playing with your water temperature and steeping time to bring out more of the chocolate flavor. Try dropping the water temperature to 195 degrees, and steeping closer to 2 than to 3 minutes. Before you take a sip, pause and pay attention to the aroma: you might find that the chocolate flavor intensifies. Enjoy this fun exercise for brewing tea, and develop your tea-tasting palate!

We also blend Birdsong Black into most of our flavored black teas. Do you detect a hint of chocolate in any of your favorite blends? Every now and then, we think we do.