Cinoi

Looking back at this, apparently I have never rated it though, it isone of the first teas I bought from Teavana. Long story short, I finished up this sample today/yesterday because one of my friends bought way too much of it at Teavana on Wednesday (so I inherited some). I did not combine the samples, as I normally would have because they are the same tea, because Teavana decided to “revamp” this tea recently by removing the raspberry flavor and adding actual little pieces of raspberries.

The original tea itself was just plain oolong with no pieces of fruit added, there was some strange essence of raspberry within the tea though. The aroma was faint with the dried leaves, but with the hot brewed tea, the aroma was definitely there. The flavor was mild, it tasted like a slightly fruity oolong. The raspberry flavor was not really describable, you tasted some sort of fruit, but it was not tart or bitter like some of their other fruity teas, instead it was sweet and gentle.

The old batch I rate at a 70.

This “new and improved” formula has little pieces of raspberries in it. You can see the pretty little chunks mixed amongst the darker leaves. The fragrance of the dried leaves is still gentle, but it is definitely stronger in the brewed tea. Also, the liquor is a slightly different color, a little darker than the previous version. The flavor is about the same though, it was really just an aesthetic upgrade.