This is a June tea of the month on the classic plan. I’ve now had several green rooibos blends from Teavana, all of which were successful in not tasting of rooibos. This one should be interesting. I noticed when I first opened it up that it appears to be a hybrid of a rooibos and a fruit blend. It has the ginormous chunky fruit pieces I’ve seen in Teavana fruit blends before (but not in rooibos) mixed in with the green, needly rooibos.
Smells fairly one-notedly of strong lime prior to steeping. Afterwards, there’s a mellower lime fragrance and a faint apple note. It’s a very pale, clear yellow.
The flavor is, expectedly, limey. I get what Soccer Mom was saying about the apple, but in my first tasting it isn’t strong at all. I may have lucked out and spooned in mixture that wasn’t heavy on the apple chunks for my first brew. Mostly, I get a fairly mellow lime that isn’t tart, and isn’t really sweet either (though I think that’s the apple’s role, to make the lime not tart). It’s nowhere near as strong as the Numi Desert Lime, which is, frankly, a good thing.
I wouldn’t have picked this to try absent my tea ‘o the month membership, and it’s not the sort of thing I’ll seek out even after tasting it, but I’m glad I got a chance to try it and I’ll be happy enough drinking it on hot summer evenings when it’s too late for caffeine until my spoon goes clink at the bottom of the tin. It’s not at all rooibossy, which is, after all, the main criterion of a decent rooibos if you’re me.
BTW, tough day today. Learned of two deaths within 30 minutes this morning before work, one of someone only 5 years older than I am who was a sort of mentor to me. So I’m in a funk at the moment.
