Green Pomegranate

First thing I noticed was large chunks of what looks like dried raspberries, impressive! The tea itself tasted much the same.. like dried raspberries. There was also some other tartness that I assume comes from the pomegranate flavor. Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever even had pomegranate before, so it’s hard to identify. Anyway, this tea was very fruity in a dried fruit sort of way rather than juicy-fruity.

As I’m brewing this… I’m thinking it smells terrible, like one of those cheap scented candles from Wal-Mart that are way too strong and smell a lot more like crummy chemicals than they do the actual fruit or whatever they are meant to resemble. They give me a headache. The smell is very strongly of fruit, and it doesn’t smell like real fruit, despite there is real fruit in it. I’m pretty familiar with the smell of warm pomegranate as I use pure pomegranate juice to create my own grenadine syrup for beverages, which basically just involves heating pomegranate juice and sugar together in a pot (though I finish it with a splash of orange blossom water). The scent of heating that juice is very different from this. It smells fresh and doesn’t penetrate the sinuses like perfume like this tea’s scent does.

In any case, the taste is not nearly as strong as the scent. It is fruity as you’d expect. Nothing about it really tastes like green tea. I’m already getting the feeling this would be a much more successful blend if it was paired with rooibos or black tea or something with a strong enough flavor of its own so that you could actually taste anything other than the pomegranate flavor.

The fruitiness becomes tart at the end of the sip, which is to be expected from pomegranate, as tasting the fruit or its juice will do that. However, there is a dry feeling in the mouth during and after the finish that makes me think “low quality green tea here”.

I feel I can’t be very forgiving to this tea because it is not very forgiving itself. You can get better green tea pre-made in a bottle at the nearest fuel station here in the states.

I was just gonna throw this sample in a swap box because it was green tea, but it smelled so good and sweet. It smelled like candy. Almost like a sharper version of Lupicia’s Melon Oolong. But no.
That was a mistake.
Time to abort mission.
The candy smell is so faint when you drink it. It’s like the green tea just takes over. Slightly sweet in the back of your throat, but just not enough. xD This is why I have trust issues with flavored Green Teas. xD

I’ve been bad about posting tasting notes lately. I still drink lots of tea… I’m just not good about writing down my thoughts on them.

This one came in one of their cute little one oz tins. I think I’ve figured out how they manage to stuff soo much tea into these tins. My theory is that the caps and bodys are already attached, and they seal the bottom of the tin! I don’t know how else they get everything to fit!

Anyway. This tea dry looks like a flat long leaf intermixed with crasins. The cranberry taste isn’t too sweet thankfully. Rather tart and bright. But thankfully not tart like hibiscus tart. The green tea actually comes through quite strongly, which I love.

As usual I got distracted and let the cup cool, but it still tastes good cold, but the cranberry taste is much more apparent when warm.

Thank you TraceyC for sending along some of this tea for me to try. I have a friend who is always looking for a green pomegranate tea so I decided to brew some of this up for us to try. It is a pleasant enough cup. The base has a slight grassiness to it but not enough that it detracts from the cup and the pomegranate is very faint, but present. All in all, not bad.

Very fruity and light – I really enjoyed this. I admit though I got more of a “general” berry flavor rather than pomegranates specifically. I have had a few real standouts from this company, this one is solid but more average and not particularly unique.

This is very good. I don’t know if I’m crazy though but what I can mostly taste is rose, not pomegranate or even fruit. It reminds me a lot of a rose green tea I have, actually it’s not that much different although maybe a bit more sweetness from the fruit. Anyway, I like it and I can’t wait to try it iced as I’m sure it’s even better.

Sipdown (198/200)

Morning cold brew in my beautiful mason jar (I haven’t said it recently, so thank you again Keychange) using the sample from the very generous and kind Boychik. I had most of this in the morning before leaving, but the remainder came in my second timolino with to the mall.

All in all, this was just sort of a generic fruity green although it did have a touch of a bitter edge to it which was unwelcome. I don’t think I’d exactly pinpoint pomegranate as the flavour though; maybe more like raspberry? All in all, ok and an easy sipdown but not really for me.

Cold brew time was five hours.

This is a nice green tea with a little bit of fruit flavoring (it doesn’t necessarily taste like pomegranate—the leaves are indeed flavored with other fruits—but the fruity touch is nice). Proper temperature and steeping time are definitely important with this tea, as I made it way too bitter the first time. While this is a very pleasant tea, right now it’s not a “stand out” so I probably won’t buy more when I finish my sample.

This was a very interesting tea which demanded attention to steeping details to avoid bitterness while retaining the more pleasant and ephemeral fruit flavors and aromas. The dry tea which to me brought memories of sweet hard candies which seemed to be the sum of pomegranate and raspberry scents. After steeping the tea the ephemeral fruit scents had vanished entirely from the mixture of torn/cut tea leaves, stems and pomegranate pieces.

Now, for the important part – the liquor. I steeped the tea at the recommended temperature of 175degF (thermometer) and sampled the liqid in 30sec intervals over the recommended steeping time of 1-3mins. At times greater than 1.5 minutes the tea became too bitter for my taste without any increase in fruit flavor – I also tested the effects of a higher temperature steep at a mere 7deg increase – ie 182degF – where as expected the unacceptable bitterness appear earlier but, also, the delicate and apparently volatile fruit flavors could no longer be appreciated well in either liquid or aroma.

Moral of the story – as others have also noted – this is a very nice delicately flavored green tea where all the flavor and scent components can be appreciated at their best if attention to preparation details are carefully followed. I enoyed both the taste (uniqueness of pomegranate with hint of raspberry) and aromas – and the challenge – of selecting the brewing conditions which were optimal for my preferences.

Worth the effort!