Cherry Potion

ugh! tart flowers!
Oh cherry… wherefore art thou…

This is another one now gone from the cupboard. A little sad, a little not. I do still have nearly 50g of Cherry Blossom left (probably about 43g), so that will have to curb my cherry cravings. Again, it was ok hot, but nothing special, and the white tea price is/was a big negative.

The liquor is a lovely amber colour. Hoping it’s not too weak like the last one; it was the same water:leaf ratio (250mL, ~1.5tsp). It smells a bit like sour acerola cherry, which is tasty.

Ok, this one’s definitely tastier iced. Loving the cherry tartness – I would so much rather have sour cherries in blends instead of hibiscus! Again, it could stand to be stronger, but that’s my fault. Like with the Mango Madness, there’s a touch of bitterness that I’m not fond of. I’m sure a bit of sugar would cut it nicely, but I really don’t want to be doing that. I’m going to attribute it to the white tea, and therefore continue the search for a herbal cherry tea to ice (well, if Mahamosa Cherry Kiwi Coconut Fruit becomes available, that will be the one, I think! Darn, should have iced the remnants of my sample last night alongside.)

If this one’s on the tea wall still (can’t recall) and I don’t locate another sufficiently cherry-flavoured tea to ice, I might pick up some more, but only because that flavour is really fabulous for iced tea IMO. Upping the rating based on the iced version :)

This tea makes me sad. The aroma of Cherry Potion is intoxicating! I want to put Cherry Potion in a small sachet to be worn around my wrist, and sniff it when I feel that I may swoon from the pressures of the day. I’ll need a fainting couch and a bustle in order to make this look work.

BUT once Cherry Potion is brewed, something goes very wrong. I don’t mind hibiscus in teas most of the time, but hibiscus is a big, bitter, bully in this tea. I can’t taste enough of the beautiful cherries in this blend because hibiscus has beaten the life out of them. The more I drink of this tea the more frustrated I become with it because I can see its potential for cherry(fide) greatness.

You’re a jerk hibiscus. BOOOO!!!!

Edit: My lips looked like this http://www.caufields.com/productimages/Valentine/Images/77885.jpg after I drank Cherry Potion! Not really, but what an oddly specific feature/ selling point.

Thank you TeaFairy for this sample!

I don’t think I’ve ever had a cherry tea. Never, ever. The cherries in this tea are the small acerola type that you wouldn’t pick and eat like regular cherries you buy in the grocery store. Way too tart! But the health benefits are better than the kind we’re familiar with. Lots of vitamin C and antioxidents! But tart. The complaints about the hibiscus in this tea may be due to the cherry and not only the hibiscus. I think that if the tartness was taken out, the Bai Mu Dan would turn into cotton in my mouth. Cat fur! What is pleasing as a creaminess can get out of hand when it isn’t tamed with a tart fruit or flower. More about that later.

My steep time was 5 minutes and the tartness was fine with me. The body was creamy and floral. The cherry medium and good tasting. Adding sweetening was something I went to right away but did not overdo. The flavor was fine. Fine, just nice and fine.

Here I go again. I am not a big fan of this combination…to tell the truth I find Bai Mu Dan kind of wierd. I almost get the creepy mouth feeling that I had with Carrot Cake tea from DavidsTea… Ick!
But this tea delivered on what it promised, an acerola cherry, Bai Mu Dan. I would not drink it again myself but glad I tried it.

So admittedly this steep was a bit of an experiment. I had enough for one cup from Indigobloom however in my house, that means i’m a cup short lol! All our mugs are too deep or too wide to properly steep in any of them for just a single cup. Soooo i improvised :) Go go pyrex dish lol Anyway this tea makes me a little sad. It has so much potential to be wonderful and tasty. The smell as it’s steeping was enough to make my other half go “ooooh that smells yummy,” which he rarely does when it comes to my tea obsession. However there’s a bitterness to it when steeped that say “thanks but no thanks.” What this does do however, is make me want to find a really great cherry tea! I developed a weird allergy to them after 25+ years of eating them just fine, but only in normal form…so a cheery tea would let me have that yummy taste again!

This was my cold steep tea to have iced yesterday at work. Wow what a difference a cold steep makes on this one. There were delicious cherries everywhere in each sip, and not a tart or off note at all. I’m glad that this summer heat is here so I can brew and enjoy this one up again this way. (And yes, summer heat in March is crazy, but my apartment hit 87 degrees yesterday!)

I think there was only 1 cherry in the bag I bought, and a staff got to this tea first; so no more cherry’s in the bag for me when I got to it yesterday.

The children (in my care at Summer Camp) love the smell of this tea, and I think if the caffeine count is low enough for this tea, it might be worth while getting 50g more to make a pitcher of sun tea for the kids to enjoy.

I will admit the leaves smell like cherry hubba-bubba, and even the kids were asking who was chewing gum almost as soon as I opened the bag. (intense scent? I think so) When steeped this tea has a orangey-red colour and starts to smell more like unsweetened Koolaid, and tastes just as bitter. This tea would need a lot of sweetening for the kids to enjoy, and I think for myself once this was poured over ice it was thinned out enough for me to enjoy the flavour more.

It is not a tea I will purchase again, unless I get some for the kids at Summer Camp and then I will use up whatever is left.

I was able to steep this tea twice and get the same intensity for each steep.

Stephanie B sent me a sample of this tea. Thank you Stephanie!
After looking over all the other tea logs, temp and steep times I decided (actually my hubby did) to steep for 3 minutes at 180
Because it seems steeping temps and times were all over the place as were the reviews we did a little calculating and came up with this average.
This smells amazing both dry and steeped.
It has a very familiar slightly sour cherry smell that I can’t place but I know I have smelled this somewhere before!
From my childhood perhaps – a cherry medicine, a candy, not sure.
There is also this interesting aroma of baby power essence in the background if you just let your senses go past the initial cherry aroma.
There is a definitive floral flavor as well.
I find that the ingredients compliment each other quite well actually.
Neither seems to over power the other.
The cherry is present although slightly sour but not bitter.
Refreshing with no lingering after taste or astringency.
Immediate after taste is a bit of tartness but only slight, with a light lilting floral note dancing on the mid section of the tongue.
This is a unique and enjoyable cup.
Thank you Stephanie B!
I would purchase this in the future.

Another white tea problem solved by using a lower steep temp + short steep!

I’m down to my last cup of this, not sure if I will get more once it is gone. It’s pretty expensive considering all the heavy fruit bits that take up space, plus I much rather Strawberry White’s subtle flavour. It is a nice “company tea” though, that always seems to elicit swoons whenever I serve it.

All-in-all though, this is a nice, fruity tea. If steeped according to DAVIDsTEA’s instructions I find that the cherry overwhelms the delicate white tea base, but once I steeped it using the 30sec @ 80°C method it mellowed out considerably! From my last 2tsp I was able to get 3 steeps all increasing in flavour! Hmmm… odd, but effective.

Oh yum! Let me start by mentioning that I love cherries. And I love most cherry-flavoured stuff. And I love white tea. And I love tart teas with hibiscus. And… well, anyway, as soon as I saw the description, I had no doubt I would loooove the tea. And I did! I have sometimes been disappointed by teas which I expected to love no matter what (for example, Mango Madness), but wow, this one is spot on! The cherry flavour is huge – stay away, cherry haters! I wouldn’t call it overpowering though, I (thankfully) still could taste some of the Bai Mu Dan, but it definitely takes most of the place. It also doesn’t taste artificial like I thought it would. It might not be like eating fresh cherries, but I don’t think it really tastes of cherry candy too much. Not that I’d mind, I love cherry candy!

So yes, for me personally, a total winner.

(One slight disappointment: I always resteep my teas, and this one did pretty poorly on the second brew. Not that it was bad, just pretty empty. But my rating only takes the 1st steep in consideration, so, still a winner!)