Cranberry & Raspberry

A simple tea(bag) from Izzy. Thank you.

Yep, nothing fancy here. A simple and well flavoured tea. Tart as cranberry, and unfortunately not much of raspberry flavour. Hesitant to keep 66, so I will add a few points for well executed flavours (but more raspberry, please!).

Licorice gives to much of a sugary sweetness in the back of the throat. A bit too tart.

Sipdown (157)

Last semester, one of my textbooks was about contract and tort law. One of my dogs, no matter where it was in the stack of textbooks, would pull out the contract book and open it and just sorta stand there staring at it. It was always that one particular contract law book. Anyways, my friend is now taking the same program as me but one semester behind so I gave her that particular book. Today, I came upstairs to my dog taking off the shrink wrap of my litigation textbook. I think he found his new favorite subject and I am slightly worried he plans to sue me over giving away the book :P.

Anyways, on to the tea…

For a cranberry/raspberry tea, I am disappointed with the inclusion of the licorice root. That’s a flavor that never sits right with me and here it is contributing its typical cloying sweetness to a tea that should be tart. The start of the sip tastes of hibiscus/rose hip and, for once, I find myself wanting more hibiscus to fight the licorice root that takes over. It just drowns out everything else making this a huge miss for me. Not to mention that it is hard to notice anything that could be considered either of the berries in the title. Luckily, I only picked up the one teabag so I can say hello and goodbye with this one unpleasant cup.

Oh man… OH MAN. If this didn’t have licorice root in it, it would be PERFECT.

It’s ultra tart and hibiscusy, definite raspberry and cranberry flavours – like jam, really. But then the licorice sweetness builds and builds and by the end of the cup it feels like I need to scrape it off my tongue.

So disappointing, Twinings! This could have been awesome.

Thanks so much, MissB, for sharing!

My final interview leftover. I actually drink this one quite a bit at events, purely because it makes a change from Earl Grey and English Breakfast. The selection is sadly that limited. I will say that I don’t mind this one too much. It smells deliciously fruity, and it tastes okay given that it’s a bagged, finely chopped monstrosity of the worst kind. I gave it 3 minutes in boiling water.

The resulting liquor is a pale red, although not as dark as I expected given that there’s a fair amount of hibiscus packed in here. The main taste is raspberry of sorts, but it’s fairly tart and somehow flat tasting, and lacks the sweet/sharp balance that I typically enjoy in a raspberry tea. Once the initial raspberry has faded, which doesn’t take long, this one is hibiscus all the way. The end of the sip is a little drying on the palate.

This isn’t a tea I’d actively seek out, but it’s one I don’t mind in a pinch. Its drinkable, but it doesn’t rock my socks.

Twinings cranberry/raspberry is quite tart. I add a teaspoon of honey to help reduce some of the sharpness. It’s drinkable with a biscuit or other sweet treat. There are other Twinings fruit teas that I’d like to try, so won’t be buying this one again.