Rooibos Tropica

Received this one as part of the blissful moments tea of the month club.

This is a mix of dried/candied fruit pieces with red and green rooibos. The dry tea smells very much like sweet candy, slightly lemony.

The brewed tea smells and tastes exactly like Teavana’s Strawberry Lemonade, which coincidentally is the other tea that came with this one. The brewed tea is a bit thicker and you can slightly taste the red rooibos underneath the candied strawberry lemonade taste. Very sweet on its own.

A bit disappointed that this one is so similar to the strawberry lemonade, and very disappointed that those two teas came together (considering they are meant to be blended together).

Oh! Oh! Oh! So I cold-steeped the last of this. Unholy artificial citrus horror would sum it up quite well.

I’m dropping this from an indifferent 55 to a near-objectionable 30 for the sheer offensiveness that is Rooibos Tropica iced. Why not lower? Because paired with these citrusy, almondy cantucci I’m having, it’s beautiful. My palate is very confused at the moment.

Now the only things in my tea cupboard bearing Teavana’s logo are my cherished travel thermoses and tins – just as it should be.

[Purchased at Teavana in Honolulu, January 2013.]
[Polished off in Rome, September 2013.]

Another Teavana tea of the month for March. (Hmm. Wonder when April’s teas will show up?)

And another I would not have selected were it not a tea of the month club offering. Confession time: I am no longer sure how I feel about rooibos (but don’t let rooibos know, k?).

When I first started trying to become a tea drinker, I liked it quite a bit. I think I liked it because it was (a) different from other drinks I’d had, and therefore novel, and (b) such a good flavor enabler. It may be particularly attractive to recent converts because it forms the backbone of so many interesting sounding drinks that, when you’re first getting your feet wet after less than stellar experiences, sound appealing because it’s almost like not drinking a tea-like beverage. Like Rootbeer Float and Tiramisu. The more excellent loose leaf Camellia Sinensis I drink, the less appeal these frou-frou approximations of existing beverages or foods have, though I remain a sucker for a good flavored black tea.

So say what you will about it, rooibos does have the very endearing quality of being an excellent backdrop. It’s the tofu of the tea world. It doesn’t have a strong flavor of its own, and the flavor that it has is mild and neutral. So it basically takes on the flavor of whatever is next to it. It loves the one it’s with.

Mostly, successful rooibos blends seem to be about the proportion of whatever the other flavor is to the rooibos. At least, I find the more successful ones to be those that sit the rooibos in the corner and don’t let it talk too much.

And that is why I find Rooibos Tropica to be a successful blend. It has a wonderful strawberry/peach smell when dry and is pretty to look at. It looks like dried rosemary dotted with blue, white and reddish-purple flower petals. (I agree with the quiet life, I don’t think there is any red rooibos in there. The ingredients on the bag don’t list it. Maybe they did change the blend.) When infused, the aroma is strawberry, peach, and a somewhat green note which could be from the rooibos, or the flower petals, or both.

It doesn’t seem that sweet to me, though strawberry is definitely present in the flavor and I’m finding Teavana’s strawberry to provide some degree of sweetness to their blends. Without the strawberry, I don’t think it would be at all sweet. If I try really hard I can taste something that seems like peach, and something that seems like orange. But what I find interesting about the flavor is that the ingredients together have some sort of synergy going on, where the sum of the individual parts is greater and different than the whole. As a whole, it’s a tutti-frutti mixture that suggests mango, pineapple, even banana — basically all the fruits you’d find on Carmen Miranda’s hats — even though none of those are identified as ingredients. And the rooibos is sitting in the corner, quietly, exactly as it should be.

So this gets a high rating for being an excellent example of its genre. Tied with the SpecialTeas Rooibos Lemon Chiffon, which I have not had in a while and need to revisit to see if recalibration is in order. However, whether I buy more is still an open question given my current doubts about my relationship with rooibos.

sample sipdown from fiddling! (285) this is a totally uninteresting boring rooibos to me. sure it’s got some fruity aspects going on but over all it’s like that friend you have where they tag along sometimes and you don’t mind seeing them but there’s never any OMG I MISS YOU! WHY HAVEN’T I SEEN YOU IN FOREVER! it’s just kinda like “hey…what’s up…cool beans, yo!”
yeah. that’s my story. lol

This is really kinda gross.

It’s so strongly rooibos & not really much of anything else. You do get a touch of fruits, but it’s more of an artificial, chemicaly fruit flavour.
Oh well I used what was in my tin to fill my pitcher with it. So I guess I’ll just toss it, unless my youngest drinks it, which at the time she said she liked.

Tea #2 from the Traveling Tea Box C

As I mentioned in Tea #1, Jake and I made up two of the rooibos teas tonight and thought we were going to each pick our favorite. Since neither of us were into the Rooibos Chai, we ended up just splitting the cup I made of this one. I think from now on I am going to skip the 16oz infuser mugs and just steep in an 8oz teacup. I just made a lot of tea that we’re just not that excited about.

While it does have a little more presence than the Rooibos Chai, this one also pulls the same flavor disappearing act halfway through the sip. What does stick with me is a more than a little artificial, but not entirely unpleasant. I tend to enjoy Della Terra’s Lemon Chiffon, and I am getting slight hints of that here.

That said, this tea will be moving on to the box’s next destination as well. At least it gave me an excuse to use the Royal Albert cup and saucer my husband found at the second hand store!

Thanks ToiToi! The first time I had this one I didn’t really like it. But when I got it in a swap I thought….. Why not. So here I am, drinking Rooibos Tropica. It’s ok. It has a nice fruity flavor. But it’s just not that impressive.

This is a nice, sweet Rooibos. As other tasting notes indicate, people like this tea. I simply cannot get aroused by a nice Rooibos, sweet or otherwise. But I am always delighted to try new teas. I’d like to get a really full scope of what I am rejecting (or accepting) before I make any final verdicts or slam the door shut on something that I might enjoy.

I make this stronger every time I make it and it just gets better and better.

Enjoying this iced today! It has such a cheerful, fruit flavor and it really does help with my allergies (like all rooibos). I highly recommend it to allergy sufferers :)