The tea comes as long, deep green needles with areas of blue-green. The smell of the dry leaves is overpowered by a “tropical fruit” aroma. I can’t put my finger on it: mango, raisins, fruit-stripe gum? I put my nose right in the top of the open tin to get any green tea smell.
I steeped my first cup at 175F for 3 min. With the strong “tropical fruit” aroma of the leaves in the tin, I am ready for a bland green tea taste overpowered by overly sweet “tropical fruit” flavor. I am wrong. The aroma over the brewing cup smelled of pineapple over green tea. When sipping, this one had a fruity aroma over the cup, and a green tea taste with the fruit coming in second and a sweet aftertaste. The green tea taste gives me mostly seaweed, with faint bitter and very faint astringency. The color is golden-green.
I steeped a second batch of leaves at 165F for 5 min. The green tea is now greener in color, and the taste profile starts out with bitter from the tea, then a light fruit aftertaste. I smelled a nutty aroma in the leaves but it doesn’t appear in the brewed tea. There is no seaweed present. It leaves my mouth with a faint astringency. These flavors all seem well balanced steeped at this temperature.
I don’t know what “tropical flavors” listed on the ingredients means, and this is a little off-putting to me. It doesn’t taste specifically like pineapple or mango, but I will finish the tin and would consider buying this again. It is a nice one to have handy that seems to steep well at the temperature of the office’s coffee maker hot water spout. The 165F is the one I liked better, so I will rate based on the cup made at this temperature.
