DARS Chocolate – Milk Tea

A few months back I mentioned that during my trip to Japan, one thing that stood out to me was how bubble tea was really blowing up over there. I feel like it was fairly recent, as they have milk tea and bubble tea everything now. While I’m no die hard fan of milk tea, I do occasionally enjoy a sugary tea drink myself. When I say everywhere I pretty much mean every well-established brand I know of has done some kind of snack to pay homage to the staple that is known as bubble tea, or boba. While many think of the tapioca loaded drinks when hearing the term, it’s also pretty much become synonymous with milk tea, with or without the toppings or bubbles.

As far as I’ve known, milk tea has always been a staple in Asia, but become popular through being slotted under the umbrella of bubble tea. The classic one is the combination of black tea and milk. Anyone who has had it would probably be able to tell you it’s got a distinct flavour to it. Something about the combination of milk and black tea just works. Milk kind of smooths out the feel of the drink and even out the bitter. There’s obviously a lot of wiggle room to get creative with the teas, but the standard one is black tea. I won’t pretend to be enough of a tea aficionado to know the difference between them all. I can tell you the difference between a green tea and a black tea base, but that’s about it.

I’m going to go out on a limb and assume this flavour is based on using a black tea, since it’s just more common. As I mentioned in a previous review I like the packaging that DARS uses. The flap opens up to reveal a nice foil sealed package. Inside the foil package there’s a little cardboard tray with 12 pieces of chocolate that are already separated as individual pieces, making it very easy to share, not having to deal with the breaks and all that.

I appreciate how uniform all the pieces are, and it’s a nice little touch where the one piece has 12 emblazoned on the top instead of the brands name. Makes me want to eat it last. Something about the presentation and execution of these chocolates makes it feel premium. Get me a dicky and cravat because I feel fancy right now.

The chocolate is of the dark, slightly bitter variety. I can’t seem to determine what tea is used, but apparently this is a limited time flavour, and is made using tea leaves. Whatever that actually means…

As a whole, I feel like DARS is the kind of chocolate you let sit in your mouth and melt away to enjoy the experience. That is what I prefer to do with these types of chocolates anyways. Especially since the entire piece is pretty much solid chocolate, it just makes sense. As far as I can tell, the inside is the same hard consistency as the outside, so all the more reason not to chew. Just go with it.

The chocolate on the outside is pretty top notch, and I’d probably peg it around 60% dark chocolate. As the dark chocolate melts away, it gives way to the inner chocolate that is supposed to be the milk tea. I’m actually pretty impressed at how close it emulates the classic milk tea flavour. Again, I’m not sure what tea it’s supposed to be, but I think I’ll just say it’s black tea of some sort. I’m not good at describing tea, other than telling you it has a dark, slightly acidic taste. There is only a very small bitterness to it, because the milk flavour kind of evens it out.

The chocolate is very firm, so while you might be tempted to bite into it right away, I feel it would be better to let it melt a little in your mouth before you try to bite into it. The melt is fairly even and smooth, and has a pretty consistent texture throughout. There’s no grit or filling that I can tell, which oddly enough disappoints me. I was expecting a tea stem or tea leave somewhere. Oh well.

I’m not sure how to say this other than, the flavour is really good and brings me back to a simpler time when I could just hang out at a cafe with a friend and enjoy a nice milk tea. I think that’s a testament on how accurate the flavour is. I have no complaints about this, and the only thing I’m not a fan of is the fact that it’s a limited release. It usually means I won’t be able to get this again until next year or some special event makes it relevant again. I would tell you all to get in on this, but odds are you won’t be able to find this.