Black Raspberry

The smell of the wet leaf (bag?) is of sweet strong berries. It smells like my favorite all fruit raspberry jam. Delicious. I hope the taste with the green tea is just as strong in flavor as it smells. I could sniff this all evening!

When slurped I get a bright berry forefront with a green tea calm as an aftertaste. It’s sweet without sugar. When sipped slowly it is a little less flavorful upfront, but still quite fruity. RoT greens don’t usually Pop me in the face with fruit flavor, but this is doing pretty well. I may try two bags next time. I just used 1 bag for 6oz and am getting decent flavor.

This is one of my favorite fruit-flavored greens, and my favorite blend from Republic of Tea. I’ve been drinking it for a few years but haven’t attempted to review it until just now. I’m struggling to put the flavor into words – I don’t know that I’ve ever actually tasted a black raspberry, so I can’t say how this tea measures up on that front. I can say that it’s almost more floral than fruity, in the way that fresh red raspberries sometimes are. It’s deep, but also delicate. It’s very, very slightly sweet; there’s no tartness whatsoever. The tea base is, thankfully, not at all vegetal; when slightly over-steeped it develops a faint hint of smokiness that complements the black raspberry flavoring surprisingly well.

I went through a big RoT phase several years back and tried most of their fruity green offerings. This was, by far, my favorite. Many of their flavors were disappointingly weak and/or loaded with hibiscus (which I don’t actually dislike as an ingredient; I just find it a poor stand-in for raspberry or pomegranate or whatever else – it only ever really tastes like itself, I think).

I’ve only ever had this one iced (brewed hot, then chilled), as that’s how I tend to prefer most fruit-flavored greens. Now that I’m thinking of it, this also seems like a good candidate for cold-steeping…

The dry leaf and the brew of this tea both smell very strongly of berries – especially the brewed tea itself. However, it’s kind of a “fake” berry smell, and that translated over into the taste.

I think this was okay if you’re just getting started into flavoured teas. I have one bag left of this to try, but I’ll send it along in a swap to Jude.

Many thanks to darby for sending me a sample of this.

Unsure how to rate this. I have made it 3 or 4 different times, and each time I primarily just taste warm water with a hint of green tea, and a bitter earth flavor that I can only assume are the berries. Odd, since the ingredients state this blend does have blueberries in it, which should have added some sweetness? I steeped it a bit longer than it called for, still not much difference in the results. Maybe it’s just not for me.