Rhubarb Oolong

Cold Brew Sipdown (341)!

So, Story of Me Tea recently had a thing where they’d send you three free cold brew/iced tea samples for just the cost of shipping – and after browsing the site I saw three teas that interested me enough to try it out.

What drew me to this one was that it’s essentially just a straight rhubarb flavoured tea. You really don’t see a lot of those, and I like rhubarb a lot so anything that leans really heavily into that flavour is something I can probably get on board with. When I cracked open the sealed packet I saw that the tea is premeasured out to be made into ice tea inside of a “teabag”, although the leaf itself is still whole loose leaf and not anything like dust/fannings. It smelled incredible too; a very, very bright and sweet jammy rhubarb taste.

Now that I’ve strained it and am sipping on it now, I’m enjoying overall for the most part. The top notes and body are very rhubarb heavy; it’s sweet and tart, and comes off like real, natural rhubarb fruit that’s almost been made into a sort of jam or preserve. There’s also a bit of butteryness and roasty notes from the oolong base. If I had been able to leave the flavour just at that, it would have been totally lovely and delicious. Unfortunately, that’s not where things ended though…

The finish of this one is so incredibly sharp and sour; it’s grassy in all the ways that a tea shouldn’t be grassy. Just harsh, and piercing and unpleasant and unfortunately very long lasting/lingering into the aftertaste. It completely ruined the lovely rhubarb flavour, and left me feeling almost nauseous with just how intense it was overall.

And now I don’t even have the rest of the pitcher to try and tinker with the find a way to make it work because I set the pitcher down on the kitchen island and one of our cats jumped up and knocked the whole thing over. I guess he wasn’t a fan of it either…

So, I’m finishing my glass of this one feeling like this started off with so much promise but ultimately feeling pretty let down by what I ended up getting. I’d probably try it again and just experiment with the brew time, but only if I didn’t have to pay to do so. Personally, with how awful that sour grassy flavour was I can’t see myself at all spending money to possibly just recreate the same thing.

What a shame.