My latest cold brew iced tea! I’ve had this forever, but I’m finally getting around to making it; thankfully it seems to have withheld the test of time well! I find that I don’t really like the taste of red rooibos when it is iced for some reason (though I love it warm!), but I do love green rooibos iced, and have been trying to keep a few more green rooibos blends around for that reason in particular.
According to the package and website, this is a green rooibos blend with “dried fruit”, and they don’t provide any more details about the ingredients than that; if I had to harbor a guess picking through the tea, I’d say it appears to be dried apple, dried blackberries, hibiscus petals, and rosehip are in the blend. The dry leaf does have a very fruity smell, a little punchy, and actually somewhat like bubblegum (a cross between Juicy Fruit and your standard sweet bubblegum aroma). It’s quite pleasant!
The tea has a really nice flavor; the mouthfeel isn’t as heavy as most hibi-hip teas, being a bit lighter and coming off almost juicy or puckering on the finish, but the taste definitely has that hibi-hip punchy sort of flavor. There is a tart blackberry flavor toward the back of the tongue, and a flavor that is sharp, and almost mineral-like, that hits on the tip of the tongue but fades quickly. The tea is tangy and refreshing. I really like green rooibos as a tea base and definitely want to try more iced teas using it. I’m almost wondering if that mineral/earthy quality that is very subtle beneath the strong fruitiness of the tea is from the green rooibos. Yum!
Flavors: Blackberry, Fruit Punch, Fruity, Hibiscus, Mineral, Tangy
