One stone, two birds.
First, I remember, vaguely, a challenge to steep something having ten or more ingredients. Well this has a whole spice rack of ingredients!
Second, @ashmanra suggested I give green rooibos a try, since I liked honeybush, and one of the thirteen components here is green rooibos!
So I went digging thru my teas and found Samurai Maté, from Adagio. Now, I thought yerba maté was a South American beverage, whilst Samurai are from Japan, so it seemed dubious at first thought. But we’re well beyond the jet age, so why not‽ ‽ I ripped open the sample pouch and inhaled deeply… wow! I could smell so many things, and yet nothing dominated, not even the cinnamon! Even the empty pouch carries a terrific peppery fruit scent, reminiscent of Juicyfruit gum and warm spices. Really appealing to me. They’ve excluded clove and nutmeg, thereby deftly avoiding any echo of pumpkin spice.
I brewed as directed: the entire pouch (~3 g) in 8 oz. boiling spring water for a whopping ten minutes. A deeply golden liquor resulted, from which an aromatic battle erupted, with anise, ginger, orange, cardamom, cinnamon, and almond finishing in détente: all contributing, but none dominating. My nose couldn’t discern the lemongrass, maté, rooibos, mango or pineapple. It was quite an odorific result, but pleasing to me.
While sipping, my tongue first noted the sweetness of… ? Perhaps sweet from rooibos, or mango, or pineapple, or papaya or orange. And while I can convince myself that I could taste all of the flavors at play (other than maté and rooibos), I mostly found my attention swept away by by the clamorous roar of battle on my tongue and in my sinuses. And some caffeine came from the maté (as I learned many decades ago, drinking Celestial Seasonings’ Morning Thunder blend, before high school) so this makes a good wake up! beverage in multiple ways.
Yes, there is a lot going on in this tisane. And I like every bit of it! Perhaps overly raucous or jarring to some, I found it invigoratingly welcome after a string of somewhat boring teas. Often cinnamon overpowers in blends, but it was under control in the sample pouch I drank today. I’ll rate it an 88 and remember to order some more at my next opportunity. My only regret is that I could not clearly discern a flavor from the green rooibos. No matter, I’ve ordered some of that as a straight tisane to better evaluate its properties.
Flavors: Almond, Anise, Cardamom, Cinnamon, Ginger, Juicy, Lemongrass, Mango, Orange, Papaya, Sweet
