And now for something completely different. This tea has been on my list to try for a while, as I love passion fruit, but I hadn’t ever gotten around to it for some reason. Now thanks to SimplyJenW, I have a sample! I really want to try this one cold steeped, but I wanted to try it hot first, so fortunately I’m finally getting around to it.
The dry leaf smells very passion fruity, in a very nice way. Maybe it’s because it’s not a common flavor for candy, but I feel like passion fruit flavor always seems more natural than some fruit flavors out there. Steeped, it retains that very juicy, fruity aroma, but it’s joined by Harney’s fruit-flavored tea base. It’s gotta be the same for all of them, right? It definitely seems like it. Anyway, the combination adds an interesting third dimension to the scent, but I can’t quite figure out what it reminds me of just now.
I’m surprised that I’m not getting a ton of passion fruit flavor out of this one. It’s definitely tart, but I don’t get a lot of that sweeter side of the passion fruit flavor (and here I’m not talking about acutal sweetness from the cup, but the not-actually-sweet flavor of sweet fruit, if that makes any sense). Even the black tea base isn’t what I was expecting; compared to the Lychee from Harney I had the other day, this base doesn’t seem to meld as well with the fruit. The cup as a whole is slightly astringent, oddly. So unexpected! Harney has some of my favorite teas, but then I’ll try one that seems like it should be perfect for me and it falls flat to my tastes (like all their Earl Greys!). C’est la vie. At this point my favorite Passion Fruit Black is thepuritea’s.
