Alas and alack. My jasmine blueberry sample is devoid of blueberries. Seriously. I looked for them everywhere and it appears not a single one made it into the sample. Sob. Sniff.
But the dry leaves do smell like blueberries, and of course, of jasmine, though these are underneath the cough syrupy thing that the Tropical Green also had. The tea steeps to a dark yellow and has, as Stephanie said, a blueberry aroma — that distinctive, tart smell that comes from berries that have been baked into something and are fresh from the oven. There is jasmine mixed in as well, which brings to mind breakfast outdoors under a vine-adorned arbor.
I am disappointed with the lack of blueberries. I don’t feel I can evaluate this properly without them. The tea is tasty enough, but I’m left with the feeling that what I’m tasting is just the blueberry flavoring, and wondering what the taste would be like with the actual berries….
Oh how sad there were no blueberrries! :(
My sample only had about two. So, maybe they’re really just there as decoration? But even those two really added an “authenticity” to the blend.
To the maker of this tea, wherever you are, —please add more berries! :)
I don’t know if this helps or not… but the actual dried berries in the blend would add very, very little to NO flavor to the actual taste of the tea. The additions in tea (such as dried fruit chunks or berries, flower petals, pieces of nut, etc) are there generally for aesthetic purposes and the flavor that you taste in flavored teas is achieved through flavoring oils (or in the cases of floral teas such as rose or jasmine, in layering the young tea leaves with the flowers during processing so that the tea leaves can absorb the essence from the flowers).
Thanks, LiberTEAS, for the info. That does help. Still, I don’t feel comfortable assigning this a number. Even if they are primarily aesthetic, the fact that they aren’t present affects my impression of the tea.