This was one of the teas that came with the gifted August subscription box from Tea Runners. Like last month, I got the “Original” box but then HIGHLY utilized the customization feature to swap out the teas that I’d tried before or seemed uninteresting to me in favor of ones that were more unique…
I really wanted to try this one as soon as I saw it because, off hand, I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen another dragonfruit rooibos blend before and I was really curious how those flavours would play together. It looks quite nice, with a simple visual comprised mostly of green rooibos some petals and a scarce amount of candied fruits. The dry aroma is sweet and reminds me of the dragonfruit flavoured “Hi-Chew” candies, but tinged with strawberry.
I enjoyed the taste a lot steeped up! It’s not overly flavoured or sweet, though a lot of the clarity of the fruit flavour was lost and it read more to me as a sweet and vaguely candied strawberry taste mixed with more of a generic tropical/fruit punch vibe versus dragonfruit specifically. Still plenty tasty, and really approachable in intensity. I liked the overall simplicity – and the choice of a green rooibos base with these softer sweet fruity notes is great.
Not an instant smash hit, but I think this is a solid fruity rooibos option even if it’s not the most “dragonfruit” of dragonfruit flavours.
They source that tea from Simpson & Vail:
https://www.svtea.com/Dragonfruit-Rooibos/productinfo/T0976/
I didn’t personally love this one, but I’ll always try a dragon fruit tea when I find one!
It’s not as simple as TR sourcing from S&V – there are at least five or six companies with the exact same catalog of teas (or significant overlap). None of them are the “original” source – which is one of the big wholesalers. However, it’s very hard to know if they’re all buying from the same large wholesaler or if companies like S&V are acting more as a middle party. Tea sourcing in general is rarely linear, especially when it comes to blended teas.