Cherry Vanilla Ala Mode

I got this tea not because I thought I’d like it, but because I thought that having lemongrass in a cherry tea was weird and that intrigued me.

It smells like tart cherries with a little fake cherry sucker on a wooden stick. The taste is fairly similar to the smell but with a dash of cherry Crème Saver thrown in – you know, those fruit and ‘cream’ candy LifeSavers? (Or were the pink ones strawberry? I dunno, I always got the orange ones.) Anyway, it tastes like that. With a bit of wood, like how a popsicle tastes when you are right up to the wooden stick. But sometimes I pick up some of that sourness that I dislike so in rooibos. So maybe the Crème Saver popsicle is really old and the wood is going bad in spots.

Anyway, I don’t really get the lemongrass. Though if I close my eyes and imagine a bit, I start think it comes through in a kind of fresh top layer the tea seems to have. The Crème Savers certainly didn’t leave that fresh feeling in my mouth.

So yeah, this basically tastes like supermarket candy. On a old stick. Which doesn’t sound that positive, but I will say that I liked the second half of my cup (once it had cooled) more than the first since all the tastes seemed to meld better and become smoother. So it was a fresh, smooth Crème Saver on a stick.

No Rooibos will ever live up to my expectations after that Coconut Custard Rooibos. Sigh. This tea is just ok for me. The smell of the dry leaves is a little cough syrupy which made me afraid to try it. The smell brewed is more like a cherry sucker from the bank. Taste-wise, I get a lot of Rooibos flavor. The cherry is a background flavor and the vanilla is subtle and just rounds out the tea. It is ‘creamy’ but I kind of want more cherry and vanilla.

As it cools, I am getting more of the cherry sucker from the bank flavor.

Medium cherry flavor that is much tamer than the smell. Nice clean finish.