This cherry-laced green tea from Harney & Sons is much more about cherry than cherry blossom, as its name would suggest. My distinct impression from many cases is that artificial cherry flavoring is much stronger than natural cherry flavoring.
I generally steer clear of artificial flavoring for two reasons. First, it’s a big black box: all bets are literally off. When someone lists “artificial flavoring” on a product line-up all you have to go on is that it’s “not natural”. Not a lot of information, and frankly a bit scary in a world in which melamine has been added to not only cat food but also toothpaste.
Harney & Sons is of course a top-notch operation, so they aren’t going to be adding any poisons to their blends. Still, it’s always best to use natural flavorings, in my opinion, whenever possible. I never, ever buy food with artificial flavorings, and had I known that it would be included in this tea, I likely would have declined.
It might sound as though I’m going overboard here, but I’m just trying to be consistent. I do not eat artificially flavored food, so why would I drink artificially flavored tea? I was disappointed when visiting the post-holidays sale at Teavana to discover that virtually all, if not all (I gave up after looking at several), of their flavored tea blends contain artificial ingredients. No sale, certainly not wittingly.
I can think of one exception to the rule, and that is vanillin. Why? Because vanillin is a natural component of natural vanilla. I’m okay with that. It’s not some totally new molecule invented by some synthetic organic chemist to mimic the scent and taste of a naturally occurring essence.
My second concern about artificial flavoring, especially when it comes to fruits, is that they are often too strong. Just as sucralose is way, way, way too sweet (to the point of being repulsive to me), I find most cherry flavorings to be more akin to cough syrup than to the natural taste and scent of cherries. Which makes perfect sense, of course, because cough syrup is nearly always artificially flavored!
Harney & Sons Cherry Blossom lists both natural and artificial cherry flavoring, and I’ve no doubt that the latter is a high-quality artificial cherry flavoring, but it is rather strong and masks the underlying tender green tea flavor. I detect no florality (as in “blossom”) here whatsoever. That’s too bad, because judging by its dry appearance and smell in the sachet, this is high-grade green tea. I’ll drink the remaining nineteen sachets in my tin but will not purchase this one again.
