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“I had been so into using samples lately that I forgot that I had ordered this tea but never tried it. This was one a blend from Sanctuary that I hadn’t seen before other places (although a quick...” Read full tasting note
A beautiful Chinese green tea with real dried cranberries and roses that smell so sweet you will smile. Steeping into a fruity and fragrant cup, this is one blend that you will make you feel warm and comforted inside.
Sanctuary T Shop is the online expression of New York City’s unique tea-restaurant based in Soho. It is dedicated to celebrating tea’s many forms, attributes and tastes. Owner Dawn Cameron and her team of tea-loving staffers are always experimenting for the perfect tea blends, tasting for the best pure leaf, expanding their tea knowledge, and innovating with new ways to use tea in food, cocktails and just about anything else!
I had been so into using samples lately that I forgot that I had ordered this tea but never tried it. This was one a blend from Sanctuary that I hadn’t seen before other places (although a quick search yields this one also being sold by Praise Tea), and I like cranberries and roses, so I thought I would take the risk. By risk I mean I have tried some of the other flavored blends they offer from other vendors, and I haven’t been crazy about them.
The dry leaf on this one smells like fake fruit flavored candy and cough drops, which is pretty typical for low- to mid-quality flavored teas, especially greens. I suppose it also smells like cranberries, but in a weird way. I went with a 2 minute steep since they recommended 1-2min, and I’m glad I did. Maybe I should go with 1 min. The steeped tea also has that weird cranberry smell that is really familiar but I can’t place it. It doesn’t smell like cranberry sauce or cranberry juice, but maybe a little like dried cranberries? I don’t know, it has a kind of fake feeling to it. Maybe it’s the cranberry combined with the rose that’s making it odd? The rose doesn’t really stick out individually, but if I think about it I can parse it out of the flavor. The end of the sip has a pleasant, light sweetness followed by a tartness that lingers in my mouth and is very reminiscent of having eaten a dried cranberry.
I dunno, maybe it’s just that as much as I like cranberries, cranberry tea is not my thing (I haven’t had one before), or maybe it’s the cran/rose combo, but as much as I do have a sense of eating dried cranberries, I also have a slight medicinal aftertaste as well. And I think part of it is that a lot of fake fruit flavoring just ends up tasting like fake cherry flavoring to me, which I am not a fan of. Yeah, somehow this does come out tasting like cherry candy. Bleh. It might just be a thing with me because others have tried the Praise Tea version and enjoyed it; I think I am getting super picky about my flavorings, especially the fruit ones. I guess that’s a good thing, but it does mean I am amassing a collection of 2oz pouches of teas I don’t want to drink. :P
