Berry Blues

The weather is starting to pick up here in the UK and the first promises of sun and hot weather have given me a craving for fruit. No fruit in particular just something sweet and juicy to relax with.

This fruit tea looked fresh and tasty in raw form, there were chunks of apple and berries that looked so soft and sweet that I had to munch on a few to try. :) Very yummy and fresh.

After the long 10 minute steep the tea is red in colour (from the hibiscus) and has a tart berry scent.

The taste is refreshingly fruity, with sweet apple being the strongest flavour followed by a sour/tart berry taste. It’s not very strong overall despite using 2 tsp of raw mixture and leaving it for 10 minutes to steep. It’s similar to one of those flavoured waters you can buy that have a slight fruity after taste.

This is right on par with the raspberry patch tea. This smells and tastes very much like blueberry bagels. It is sweet and has a little bit of a punch. I think that this one may be a bit lighter than the raspberry patch one. I love both and I’m pretty sure that I’d love to have these as a staple in my cupboard just because I seem to crave herbal/fruity teas often. It is a truly easy tea to make and likely tastes great iced.
edit I know just what it tastes like! There is this Kashi cereal, I think it’s berry fields or something like that, but that is exactly what this reminds me of.

Let me preface this review by stating that I am not a blueberry fan. The berries themselves aren’t too bad but I generally hate anything with blueberry flavoring or actual berries in it; muffins, pie, etc. My husband got me two adagio tea of the month clubs for my birthday, herbal and black and this came with the last shipment. Given my feelings about blueberries I wasn’t terribly excited and figured it would go up for swap. Then I opened it and smelled it. Hmmmm…it doesn’t smell evil.

One night I was in the mood for tea but none of my typical desserty herbals and rooiboses (rooibosi?) sounded appealing so I figured, what the heck, and gave this a try.

It’s not the little cup of grossness I imagined. In fact, it’s kinda tasty. I’ll chaulk this up to the fact that it was made from real blueberries. I may even consider getting this again.

I LOVE this tea, but I’m a fan of big, bold, sweet teas, so that’s no surprise. Great fruity flavor and a fantastic aroma, so if you like sweet teas, then this one’s for you!

A friend got a sample of this and I got to finish off his sample. I’m not sorry there isn’t any left. The dry tea smells clearly of dried blueberries. That is important, because I know that (to me) blueberry juice is just a sweet ho-hum… On to the tea…
It brewed up surprisingly dark for an herbal, reddish like a Ceylon. Blueberry = Sweet in my mind. This tea wasn’t sweet — It was sour! A direct kick to the back edges of my tounge with no apologies. The true components of the tea shine through…rose hips and hibiscus (I looked it up). I don’t get blueberries out of the this — I get cranberries! There were a lot of dried apple pieces, easily 1/3rd of the bulk of the tea mix. I didn’t detect any apple flavor directly..the other components were just too bold, but I think the apple smoothed over the sour components and kept the result from being puckering sour.
Bottom line: I’d drink this again, but I think blueberry isn’t an accurate representation of what it delivers.

Note: one taster below seemed to think this has rooibos. It doesn’t.

When I sleep until noon on a Sunday—especially now that I’m getting middle-aged and my sleep patterns are changing—I have a lot of trouble getting to sleep on time Sunday night. Hence my zero caffeine policy on Sundays, which makes me a little sad because Sundays are when I have time to sit and sip tea and ponder what kind of tea I’m craving (generally oolong or Youthberry or the Taiwan Red Tea I got at Jade Mountain, all with caffeine).

So Sundays I tend to bring out my tisanes and other non-caffeine drinks, and this one is a winner in my book. I set my electric teakettle to boil, and steeped for 8 minutes (the package says 5-10 min.), and was greeted by a deep pinky-purple brew. I added copious amounts of rock sugar—3 tsp.? Not sure, I’m a sugar addict—and let the sugar melt for a minute.

The result: fruit perfection. It is definitely the chunks of real fruit in this that gives such great fruit taste, though my chunks were not HUGE as one reviewer’s were! You can’t go wrong with apple pieces in a fruit tisane, and there are lots in this. And I did see a few petals of hibiscus, but not tons, so you don’t end up with something unbearably sour (though I can’t vouch for what this is like without sugar).

With the sugar this might as well be fruit juice, with a deep berry taste that really satisfies. It’s warming and richly flavored hot; bet it would be amazing cold! I’ll have to try that next time…!

I wonder if this kind of tea will always let me down. Every time I open a bag of fruit tea, I’m overwhelmed by the scent. Berry Blues is no exception — I can smell fresh blueberries, maybe a slight twang of apple. It’s mouthwatering. Put it near water, though, and it all disappears.

It’s not that this tea is bad. It’s naturally sweet, and has a wonderful tartness that’s not too OTT. It just doesn’t taste of Blueberries in the way I was expecting it to. I’m tempted to blame the hibiscus for overpowering the blueberries, but it might just be that I’m expecting too much. Perhaps no blueberry tea is ever going to taste as divine as it smells. I think I might try brewing this with cooler water and a little honey next time, and see what that does for the flavour.

In the cup, this tea takes on a deep berry red/pink colour, and smells generically fruity. The chunks of fruit are generously sized and easily identifiable. It’s pleasant enough to drink, but the scent had built me up to expect something I wasn’t going to get. Blueberries. Badly.

Mild flavor, not strong. A bit tart… Not sweet so much as tasting like berries without the sweetness.

It has a long finish. The finish is more blueberry than the sip.

A nice enough tisane for getting in my water total for the day, but if I wasn’t disallowed caffeine and was able to drink regular teas I’d not bother with this.

I like blueberries but this one just isn’t packing a blueberry punch… It’s just does not have enough flavour for me.

Adagio isn’t lying with the name! It’s definitely a berry tisane… Less cranberry than I would have expected. Yum!

Tastes like a strong mixed berry blend. I love this tea, and will definitely pick it up often. I’d imagine very good as iced tea as well.

Fantastic, deep color and fruity scent. Perfect nighttime tea – a little sweet with a full, fruity flavor. 1st Steep water:180 degrees, and steeped for just over 8 min.

A delicious berry tea with bold flavor and beautiful color. Even the kids like this one.

It’s a good tisane but it’s better as cold, refreshing beverage.
It’s really sweet for a Tisane though, but i recommend this to those who prefer Iced Tea

I liked this much better iced than I did hot – but that’s usually my opinion of fruity teas and tisanes. It’s sweet like juice but zero calories, which makes it an instant win in my book, but it’s not as strong in the blueberry flavor as I’d hoped.

This is basically candy. Delicious, delicious candy.

I was quite afraid to brew this tea based on how it smelled from the bag. The scent was super potent and it reminded me of cough medicine. My boyfriend thought it smelled like weird soda. I erred on the side of caution (strange smell and hibiscus) and brewed it just for five minutes. Thankfully, it’s not at all scary and actually quite pleasant. This would make a great iced tea, so that’s how I’ll finish up my sample I’m thinking. The berry flavors are definitely present, but the hibiscus is at the forefront (though, not too hibiscus-y or I wouldn’t drink it).

I’m having 24oz of this iced right now. I put some of Teavana’s rock sugar in it. Yum!