Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Tiesta Tea
Tea Description:
Throw a jolt of passion in your day! With a unified blend of Assam black tea, cornflowers, marigolds, and passion fruit flavoring, this fruity Energizer is sure to keep you locked, loaded, and ready to go. Tastes great iced!
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
The aroma of the dry leaf of this Passion Berry Jolt Black Tea Blend from Tiesta Tea is delightful! Highly fragrant with notes of passion fruit and raspberry, and lovely floral tones … I found myself very eagerly awaiting this tea to HURRY UP and brew! I couldn’t wait to taste it.
And I’ve tried a number of passion fruit flavored teas … and it probably goes without saying that some I’ve enjoyed more than others. This one … this one is spectacular! This is one of the best passion fruit flavored teas I’ve encountered. The passion fruit and the raspberry meld BEAUTIFULLY together. I don’t really consider myself to be an expert on things passion fruit flavored, but I will say that I am really enjoying this tea’s fruit flavoring.
The fruit tastes very authentic … it doesn’t have that chemical-y, artificial-ish taste that sometimes accompanies fruit flavored teas. This tastes more like real fruit to me. It is sweet, juicy-tasting, and there is just enough tartness to the flavors to keep it from being a cloying drink. Very pleasant, and very easy to sip.
And I like that I taste the black tea here. It is an Assam base, and it is good and strong like a good Assam should be. It has a hint of malty taste, and just a hint of a wine-ish kind of flavor too … and it’s this wine-like note that works so well with the fruit flavors, enhancing the berry tones and offering depth to the passion fruit notes. The combination of these three elements – Assam tea, passion fruit and raspberry – work so well together.
The flower adds more to the visual interest of the dry leaf than it does to the actual flavor, and I’m OK with that. I found the way these flavors came together to be so enjoyable that I didn’t need there to be more to the floral tones than maybe a hint or two of floral taste to the cup. I find that the floral notes do emerge more once the tea has cooled.
A really delightful cuppa from Tiesta Tea … this one may be my favorite that I’ve tried from them thus far! I highly recommend this one! I suspect that if you try it, it may just become a STAPLE in your tea cupboard during the summer … because it’s awesome iced!
Kiwi Cherry Bonanza Fruit Tisane from Tiesta Tea
Tisane Information:
Leaf Type: Fruit Tisane
Where to Buy: Amoda Tea
Tisane Description:
Kiwi lovers rejoice, your tea is here. Non-kiwi lovers rejoice, you’ll love it too. This tea smells sweet and tastes sweet (not a huge surprise since it’s a blend of different fruits).
There’s a hint of spice courtesy of the ginger bits that gets ya mostly in the delightful cherry ginger finish.
Learn more about this tisane here.
Learn how to subscribe to Amoda’s Monthly Tea Tasting Box here.
Taster’s Review:
OK, I didn’t have my hopes too high for this Kiwi Cherry Bonanza from Tiesta Tea – the third of the three teas in this month’s Tea Tasting Box from Amoda Tea. I enjoy fruit tisanes on occasion, but generally, I find them to be pretty weakly flavored infusions, and kind of boring, really.
Not so with this tisane! This tisane has a lot of flavor to it! It is definitely one of the better FRUIT tisanes I’ve had (that is, a tisane that is primarily fruit and not so much herbs, hibiscus and other stuff). The only non-fruit ingredients this tisane has is carrot, which is my favorite vegetable so I’m all for the carrot being in there; and ginger, which adds a pleasant hint of spice to the cup … a really nice contrast to the sweet and tangy flavors of kiwi and cherry.
The apple plays a big role in this cup, which is often true of fruit tisanes like this … and that’s one of the reasons that I typically am not a big fan of fruit tisanes. The apple is often all that I can taste in fruit tisanes, and it ends up tasting not like apple juice or apple cider, but a washed out, weak apple water. But, again, this tisane is NOT like fruit tisanes I’ve tasted in the past. The apple here is strong, but, it doesn’t leave the cup tasting like a weak apple water. It enhances the overall cup, adding a little bit of body to the cup as well as sweetness to amplify the flavor of the cherry and especially the kiwi.
I love the cherry here. It is a little bit tart and a little bit sweet, and it is the star of this cup. I like the role that it plays. The cherry steals the show with it’s flavor, brightening the cup with tangy notes and a sweet, juicy cherry taste that is not at all medicinal the way many cherry flavors can taste in teas and tisanes.
The kiwi flavor is what I was most excited to experience though, because there really are very few kiwi teas and tisanes out there. And I love the kiwi! Here, the kiwi flavor is sweet and tastes a little subdued in the midst of the stronger cherry and apple notes, but I find that the kiwi comes through especially well toward mid-to-end of sip, I notice that sweet, distinct kiwi note. YUM!
This is really much, much better than I anticipated it to be, and I’m really glad I got to try it. Despite my woes with having too many tisanes in these tea tasting boxes from Amoda Tea that I mentioned in my Amoda Tea Box post, I really quite enjoyed both tisanes that were included in this month’s box. Sure, I would like very much to have more teas than tisanes in these boxes, BUT if Amoda keeps picking winners like they did this month with tisanes, I would still say that I’m a very satisfied Amoda Tea subscriber.
Fireberry Tisane from Tiesta Tea
Tisane Information:
Leaf Type: Rooibos & Herbal Tisane
Where to Buy: Tiesta Tea
Tisane Description:
Dark, rich, and smooth. Who doesn’t want that? With a combination of all your favorite berries, this charmer will definitely leave you burning for more. (Another amazing iced tea!)
Learn more about this tisane here.
Taster’s Review:
This Fireberry Tisane from Tiesta Tea is a very unexpected tisane. The name suggests to me a tisane with the warming power of ingredients such as chili pepper or perhaps ginger … but this tisane has neither. And because I didn’t read the ingredient list before I took my first sip, I was surprised at how smooth this tasted. It didn’t taste sharply tart the way many fruit and herbal tisanes do, and I suspect this has something to do with the rooibos in the blend.
Oh, it still has some tartness – not just from the hibiscus but from the three different berries: cranberry, currants and elderberries. But the sweet, slightly nutty, slightly honey-esque notes of the rooibos softens the tart bite.
This is a tasty blend. I do still find myself a bit let down by the lack of “fire” in this blend, and I am wishing that there was in fact some chili pepper or ginger of something else that might give it a touch of heat. As it is though, it’s a remarkably smooth tisane … with a nice sweetness and contrasting tart note that doesn’t take tart too far.
Enjoyable … one I would be happy to drink again.
Blueberry Wild Child Fruit Tisane from Tiesta Tea
Tisane Information:
Leaf Type: Fruit Tisane
Where to buy: Tiesta Tea
Tisane Description:
The popular pomegranate superfruit demonstrates its best attributes in a tag-team duo with the fruity blueberry. This delicate twosome will invigorate your taste buds with a very fruity taste experience with extraordinary eye appeal with its robe of royal blue cornflowers, blue mallow blossoms, hibiscus, and elderberries.
Learn more about this tisane here.
Taster’s Review:
I am usually fearful of tisanes with hibiscus in them, mostly because too often, the hibiscus is overdone and the result (especially if oversteeped!) is a thick, syrup-y, overly tart tasting tisane that is really off-putting to me. Fortunately, that didn’t happen with this Blueberry Wild Child Fruit Tisane from Tiesta Tea.
I brewed this in just under boiling water (195°F) for six minutes. I found that this produced a really delightful cup of naturally caffeine free tisane that is sweet, fruity and not too hibiscus-y!
Sure, I taste the hibiscus, but, it melds nicely with the blueberry and does not overpower the cup. This tisane is not syrupy, unpleasantly thick or tart. It is just right! It is a little bit tart, a little bit sweet, and a whole lot of flavorful! The body is what I’d categorize as medium to full … it is substantial without being thick and syrupy.
What I taste, primarily, is blueberry! I also taste hints of pomegranate, hibiscus and even a wine-like note that I attribute to the elderberry. The apple is barely noticeable, but, I think it adds a pleasant sweetness to the cup that it really needs given the tart berries (not to mention the hibiscus) in this blend.
Overall, a very enjoyable cup. Something I didn’t expect to like, but I really do! For something a little different, try adding some bits of cinnamon stick to the tisane before brewing – it gives it a really nice touch of spice!