I tried this as both an iced sample and a hot cup to go at my local David’s. Cold it had that tart cranberry bite I love, but with some sweet to balance it out. An average experience overall, but I don’t do iced tea much and generally don’t care for my tea being cold, so I needed to try it hot to fully render my judgment.
Unfortunately, that judgment is…well. There is a reason they sample this tea iced. Hot, any sweetness in this tea disappears, overtaken by the intense harshness that is the dark side of the cranberry. I ask you, friends: have you ever tried cranberry juice? Pure cranberry juice, with no clever blending with the juice of sweeter fruits like grapes and apples like most “cranberry juice” you’ll find in your local supermarket? If you haven’t, let me tell you, it’s not fun. It has gone to tart country and decided that this place is not hardcore enough, and it is going to liven it the hell up. The tartness is seriously dialed up into a very screwy kind of bitter. Any sugar in the berry has fled deep into hiding in fear for dear life. You’re left with an astringency of the kind that makes the juice very difficult to swallow. And hot, this tea tastes very much like cranberry juice, diluted in water in a desperate attempt to make it bearable. The attempt is, largely, not very successful. I can just barely taste the other flavors, desperately trying to get out and smooth things over, but they’re drowned out by the overwhelming force of the cran.
It’s a pity, because I actually have a deep and abiding love for cranberry. But cranberry needs to be carefully managed and subdued to really shine, and everything else in this blend just doesn’t seem up to the job. I ended up having to just give up and toss out the tea mostly undrunk, and that makes me very sad because it feels like such a waste.
