Caramelized Pear

Oh man. Oh, oh man. Been looking forward to this tea after having read through everyone else’s tasting notes. Picked it up in Select last week. My first from Art of Tea.

Let me keep it simple: if you like pear, you’ll love this tea.

Now, I happen to be a big fan of pears so that works just fine for me. As far as the other elements, I’m thinking about the caramel in particular, I didn’t get much of that. Really, just pear. In fact, when I sought a particular flavor out that I thought might be coming through I was just hit with…more pear. Mind you, this is not a bad thing. In fact, this is easily one of the better rooiboses I’ve had in a while, if not my favorite. It’s a lot of fruit, without being too much fruit, if that makes sense.

If you’re looking for a nice fruit blend and have had enough of the citrus, apple et. al, definitely give this one a shot! Great after dinner tea.

Thanks to Doulton for this sample! I have read many positive reviews for this tea.
Perfect for the afternon, this is a light tasting rooibos pear flavored tea…The pear is natural tasting even though the blend had apples and no pear?

Art of Tea sells a Green Tea- Pear blend. Personally, this would have been my preference. I could get the delightful pear flavor, no rooibos, AND green tea….

Well sorry its just not for me – its not bad – its just not striking me the way it has others and with that said it needs to find a good home where it will be loved. I am sending this one to Kittenna maybe she will love it and care for it. :)

Backlog from last night. Sipdown, 199. Yeah, I added all my recent swaps into my cupboard and it ended up at exactly 200! Haha awesome. And I was able to quickly drop back down to below 200 last night. This one comes to me thanks to GiggleGoddess.

I was interested in this tea even though I am not a big fan of rooibos because it had quite a few good reviews. I was pleased that it didn’t smell medicinally like rooibos gets for me often. It mostly smelled sweet and fruity. I thought it tasted pretty authentically pear-ish, with definite rooibos background but not enough to be annoying. At first I thought this was caramel pear, not caramelized pear, so I was thinking that it wasn’t quite matching up because I didn’t get any caramel flavor. But caramelized pear is a different ball game, that is a sugary baked pear, and that I could definitely see here. Still not a tea that I would pick up to drink regularly in the evenings, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

Slight backlog…brewed up a big pot of this before starting my Thanksgiving contribution: Chocolate Blackberry Spice cake. It’s now in the oven, and I’ll frost it in the morning. Here’s hoping it turns out well!

And now, my teapot is empty and I have to clean the kitchen. sigh

This is the best flavored rooibos I’ve tasted. This and Ocean of Wisdom. Except OoW is way more grown-up and sophisticated than this. They fit different niches.

ANYWAY, that Strawberry Chocolate let me down earlier today, and I wanted to end the evening on a somewhat better note. With a bit of trepidation, I decided to do this one by Art of Tea. The lovely Jon gave me this as part of my Christmas present, but I hadn’t tried it. The rooibos blend is very pretty, with the marigold blossoms and the bits of apples, offset by the red rooibos. It smells ridiculously of pear. Not even joking. I feel that pear is such a hard thing to nail. It’s one of my favorite fruits, but fake pear tastes are pretty gross. Luckily enough, this smells fresh and juicy and even a bit candied.

So I steeped it up for a bit longer than required, and the smell emanating from the infusion was pure pear. Almost like the aroma equivalent of Jelly Belly’s Juicy Pear flavor (which is amazing if you’re a pear freak). I took the first sip, a bit afraid of what I was going to encounter… and okay, all doubts have pretty much vanished.

This is a caramelized pear tea, and it tastes like a caramelized pear tea. If you’re not a fan of rooibos, the rooibos taste is barely noticeable. At all. I can’t even really detect it. What I am getting is succulent, wonderful pear all the way through. It’s in the top note, the end note, the everything note. The caramel comes through only extremely slightly in the end taste, and in the scent, but it’s definitely not the star. And there’s a wonderful sweetness. A fresh fruit sweetness that lingers on your tongue after every sip.

Needless to say, I’m pretty damned impressed with this one by Art of Tea. It’s very light and compulsively drinkable. I could see sticking this in the fridge and coming out with a delicious sort of iced tea. Now this is what I call a dessert tea!

Sip down! Thank you to kittenna for this one. So I’m really enjoying the pear flavour in this one. I also really like the way that it smells. What I don’t seem to get out of this is anything remotely caramel. And, if i concentrate too hard on the taste, that weirdly rooibos taste comes to the forefront of things and ruins the good thing that I almost had going with this tea. Hmmm… Too bad. Just to have the chance to have this, but still not my perfect pear tea.

I got this in the sample swap from Meowkattack! Mmm it smells sooo good and it’s even better when it’s steeped! I can pick out the fresh pear and caramel notes. I’m actually impressed with this tea! It’s so sweet and juicy! The flavors are done so well! I’m so happy I got to try this. Thank you again!

Hooray for my Art of Tea order coming in!

What I really want to try is the Mandarin Silk oolong (the aroma coming out of the tin is seriously to die for), but my Zojirushi was set to 208 and I’d just had two cups of tea this morning, so I thought I’m probably caffeinated enough as it is, and should probably wait a little bit. Might as well have some of this, right?

I’d wanted to try this since ages ago, when teaplz and Takgoti were ranting and raving about it…but then I ordered this Coco-Loco rooibos from SerendipiTea (it seemed so promising! Many kinds of chocolate! Mmmm!) and…well, scared myself away from rooibos. It had a faint taste of…er…bile. Seriously. :( And given that being nauseous/throwing up/being around people who are throwing up/encountering the odor of any puddles left behind by people who have thrown up/etc. may rank at the top of my very short OMG Can’t Handle It list, my response was a pretty visceral ‘no way, nope, no thanks, never in a million years, thanks for playing, peace out’.

This actually smells pretty good, so I am wary but tentatively hopeful. The scent of it is quite fruity, and actually reminds me of The Cracker Barrel for no immediately-recognizable reason. It’s something to do with the spiced-and-stewed-sweet-fruit thing, I suppose, that makes me think ‘southern country kitchen’.

It’s still VERY hot, but…first impressions are…pretty good, actually. I think I can locate the flavor of the rooibos that sent me running for the hills, but it’s different here, more nutty-woody than woody-sour, and the nice thing is that I don’t have to find it if I don’t want to. I can concentrate as I exhale and get it, but if I don’t care for it…why would I do that?

As the cup is cooling, that woody aspect is a little bit ‘rounder’ in flavor, if that makes any sense — more expansive but also softer, and pretty well tied to the pear flavor, which is strong and delicious. I keep finding myself holding the tea for a moment in my mouth, so I suppose my fear that the cup would lose its ability to cover the rooibos up as it cooled must have been needless!

I really like this. I’m not sure that I would want it every night, but I really have been remiss in seeking out caffeine-free alternatives to tea for the evening, and this one is pretty tasty. The flavor is almost totally stewed/baked pear, but after you swallow you get a tangible, almost tactile sweetness on your tongue that is definitely caramel, though it’s a very gentle sweetness, not cloying or sticky or astringent at all.

Man, I’m so relieved. I was totally not prepared for this to be bile in a can all over again! I think I can totally find a place for this in my cupboard on the reg.

I didn’t really have high hopes for this one – most flavoured rooibos tea I’ve tried tend to be mostly rooibos with not much ‘flavour’. This one was a pleasent surprise however, because what I tasted is pear – lots and lots of pear. Its real pear too, not an artifically-created approximate. I can almost feel the slightly gritty texture you get when you bite into a ripe pear as I sip this tea. The caramel is more subtle, a light sweetness than appears mostly as the tea cools off. I also love that I can hardly taste the red rooibos.