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This tea is… decent.
I am not particularly a fan of hibiscus teas so I had a hard time convincing myself to give this one a try because the first ingredient on the ingredients list is “hibiscus flowers,” which is too bad since it’s a white tea. I can’t say I was too happy about that but I eventually did end up buying a 50g bag for myself, considering the list of ingredients mirrored the list of my favourite strawberry tea (Teaopia’s Strawberry Fields) almost perfectly.
The smell of this tea dry is just heavenly. It smells like fresh strawberries topped with a huge dollop of cream, but there was a faint apple scent as well. Once steeped, the smell becomes a lot more syrupy/sugary. It smells… artificial. This was a big letdown but I decided to base my judgment on the taste test and not the smell. And that’s where the true letdown happened.
Hibiscus. Hibiscus everywhere. Hibiscus really took the wheel with this tea and almost completely overpowered the fruity notes. It is definitely less pronounced when cooled down, but the strawberry flavour that comes through then is definitely not as Pow! Fresh In Your Face Strawberry! as I had hoped. It’s quite artificial tasting. This is not necessarily a bad thing. I can see this tea being quite wonderful brewed with a lemonade or with a few shavings of frozen lemon added to it (which I will try next) but a substitute/rival to Strawberry Fields it is not. Someone on the Teavana site mentioned that cutting down the tea to around 1/2 to 3/4 a teaspoon greatly reduces the artificial flavour so I’m not giving up on this tea just yet.
This tea is not as delicate and light as I would expect from a white tea, which is disappointing considering the price tag, but I think there’s a great tea hiding here, just maybe a little fussy.