Sipdown (118)!
So, uhh, this is different…
This sample comes from TheLastDodo and is her slightly altered version of it. Because she found it very sweet she added onion flakes, garlic pieces, and red pepper flakes & also suggested brewing it in a vessel I don’t normally use for tea because of how much the smell carries over. That’s why I did this as a cold brew; my mason jar doesn’t retain smell/taste at all and can always be dishwashed worst case scenario.
The brewed up liquor is a vibrant cherry red, or I guess in this case more of a tomato red. I can’t help but wonder if what Teavana was going for was sort of a lime Clamato type thing? Is that big in the states? Someone at work said that Clamato is a mostly Canadian thing and that when she traveled to the states people were really weirded out by the concept. Personally, as a Canadian, is weirds me out too (and as I write this I’m eating pasta absolutely doused in ketchup popcorn shaker; who’s the weird one now) but it’s also super, super popular here…
I can absolutely taste the garlic/onion that’s added in here: probably one of the more dominant flavours, though if we’re being honest everything about this is dominant and not necessarily in a great way. The tomato is present too; very present actually – but it’s more like a sweet, kind of tangy tomato paste/sauce? And kind of artificial like the ketchup popcorn shaker I love so much.
Part of the tang I’m getting obviously comes from the hibiscus/apple/lime in the blend too – they’re also contributing a lot of noticeable flavour. I can sort of see why TheLastDodo added the savory ingredients; otherwise I think the tomato in the blend actually could have been overpowered – and that’s such a weird thing to say of a blend that has something as peculiar as tomato in it.
The clash of sweet and savory here doesn’t really work though; I absolutely didn’t enjoy this blend (although it was hella memorable). But also, to put it into perspective, it worked more than I thought it would. Like, I drank like two thirds of this monstrosity while cooking supper tonight and though I grimaced with each sip it really didn’t occur to me until quite far into drinking it to toss the rest out (which I eventually did).
So…
A fail, but not as bad a fail as it could’ve been!? I can’t help but wonder what I would’ve thought of the unaltered version. Not that I’ll be seeking it out. Big nope on that front. Not going to rate, ‘cause I don’t have the original version to use as a baseline.
