PONOinfusions

It’s produced on my island and I like to support local businesses so I was excited to see it in Whole Foods. Puerh/Cacao infusion.. The packaging touts that it will make 47 – 8oz cups…. But I’m sorry, this was bloody awful. It was herbal yucky bland water and I think even if I had upped the tea to water ratio, I would have just ended up drinking stronger yucky water. Didn’t get any cacao and I was looking for it! I do not recommend this at all.. it was a wasted $12.

~ that same evening I had picked up Numi’s Chocolate Pu-erh tea bags .. which gave a MUCH more decent cup.
~ ~ I’m a puer noob, and I hate herbal teas… so take my review as you will.
~ ~ ~ color me surprised that LiquidProust had gotten his hands on this and reviewed it!! Hahah!

Despite this being a mint tea, I decided to pour it over ice just to see how it would taste – and it’s delicious. It’s mint flavor is mild and has a slight berry taste at the end is accentuated when you taste it cold. This is the perfect tea for when you’re feeling under the weather.

Sipdown (138)!

PONOinfusions is a company I only very recently discovered thanks to a sample from Liquid Proust. So far, I love everything about them from their use of organic and fair trade certified ingredients to the incorporation of Hawaiian ingredients in their blends, creative themes to their teas, incorporation of Hawaiian culture and most importantly the strong emphasis on the fauna and flora in Hawaii which are endangered or at risk. On each tin you can see some of these species highlighted in the packaging, and a portion of their sales go to support working to sustain and preserve Hawaii’s natural resources and plant and wildlife.

As described on their site, ‘pono’ means ‘the right thing to do’ and my first impression here is that Alex and Andrea are certainly doing their best to do that for Hawaii! I am very excited to get my first taste of one of their blends.

The tisane I’m trying today (and not all of the teas in their line are tisanes) is called “Wai” which means fresh water, and the feature fauna and flora on their package’s design are the Hawaiian damselfly and uluhe fern. As I taste this for the first time, I’m definitely keeping the intended ‘theme’ in mind and will be seeing how the flavour compares to it.

My first impression of the taste is that it’s very familiar in a really comforting way. Breaking down the flavours I can see why; a lot of the ingredients are ones I like a great deal individually and they’re working very well combined. The body of the flavour of comprised mostly of the mint in the blend. I know this uses both peppermint and spearmint, but the spearmint is definitely more of a dominant/concentrated flavour than the peppermint is. Layered under that is the raspberry. It’s not raspberry in a really obvious way; but a gentle, subtle soft hint of raspberry that provides contrast from the mint. The nettle leaf is a little earthy and unrefined, it seems to roll in and out of sips as a flavour that I’m noticing. Finally there’s a floral aspect that finishes the sip. It reminds me of a mild jasmine though as far as I’m aware there isn’t actually any jasmine or floral ingredients in the blend.

While none of these ingredients individually make me think of fresh water there’s something about the way they interact with each other that’s very calming and tranquil and reminds me of seafoam, and skinny dipping with friends in the middle of July as the sunsets. Additionally, I remember reading a poem not too long ago that compared the ocean to a womb, first and foremost giving life and that’s the kind of feeling I get from drinking this tea. I want warm waves to wash over and cradle me.

Overall, I really like the overall taste of this tisane but more importantly I love the way it makes me feel. I haven’t been this excited about a newly discovered company in a really long time, and I’m excited to hopefully try more of their blends (in particular I’m hoping I get to try Nahele) and I very, very much recommend checking out their website! Definitely a cool company, and I think they deserve a little more attention.

Also, I’m very happy that this is my 2900th note! It seems like a good tea to be my next ‘100’ milestone. I guess this means I need to start planning what my 3000th tea note will be for; that’s gonna creep up on me before I know it…

I am not sure why anyone would make such a mixture so I bought this out of curiosity. The look of it made me laugh because it looks like someone powdered something off the ground with some trampled on flowers. I went ahead and dropped a large amount in my french press for my friend and I and we ended up drinking two cups each and came to the conclusion that this tea taste like a delicate herbal tea with strong notes of a smooth pu-erh. The chocolate taste isn’t very strong which is nice, but it is bout the same as the chamomile taste. There is a bit of tweaking to be done with this tea it seems, but from my experience it was different and enjoyable.