Reading the reviews about this had me pretty excited to try it, despite my trepidation — the last pear-flavored tea I tried was Teavana’s white pear tea, and it sort of chased me off.
I think the strong smell coming out of the brewed cup was a little bit frightening. It was cloying and heavy and dark, more like honey-stewed fruit than fresh pear. The taste is better than that, thankfully; it reminds me of the flavor of those straw-like plastic tubes of honey you can buy at certain candy stores, combined with an obvious pear flavor. That shouldn’t really be too daunting, but somehow it is. I’ll finish the cup, but I can’t picture myself craving this, out of all of the teas that I could select.
I do like pears and I certainly love honey, but maybe the pair of them together and hot are just not my bag of tea, so to speak. Maybe it’s just ‘hot pear’ that gets overwhelming. This one might redeem itself for me over ice, where the perfumey honey-sweetness is more expected. In fact, I’m guessing that’s almost true for a certainty, as the more the cup cools the sweeter the flavor gets, balancing out the stewed-fruit taste to replace it with a more alluring sugary aftertaste. I’m curious enough that I might try it that way. Maybe I should try Teavana’s white pear that way, too, since I haven’t even touched the stuff since that first ill-fated cup.
