Tisane Information:
Leaf Type: Fruit/Herbal Tisane
Where to Buy: Good Life Tea
Tisane Description:
Ginger spices up this tropical blend of dried apples, coconut, rose hip, hibiscus and lemongrass. Step aboard for your 3 hour tour and loose yourself in your own island bliss.
Learn more about this blend here.
Taster’s Review:
More hibiscus. Well, since this is another tisane from Good Life Tea and I had pretty good luck with the C of Tranquilitea tisane I hoped as I steeped this tea that my experience with this tisane would be as favorable as my experience with the C of Tranquilitea was.
This blend has a bit too much hibiscus for my liking, and that’s most of what I’m tasting. If I can get past the tart, pungent taste of the hibiscus, I can taste subtle notes of ginger and lemon grass.
It is a rare occasion when I find ginger in a tea and it’s presented as a subtle spice, but here, the hibiscus is so strong that it obscures the flavor of the ginger unless I slurp the sip. The aftertaste is tangy and there is some ginger heat to the aftertaste. This warmth from the ginger gradually intensifies as I continue to sip the cup, but it never really becomes a strong flavor in the cup.
The same is true of the lemon grass and the other ingredients in this tisane. I can taste them – very faintly – but most of their flavors are hidden behind the strong hibiscus notes.
Normally, I might blame this on over-steeping. But I steeped this tisane for just five minutes in 195°F. Usually, with a hibiscus blend, I steep for six minutes, but when I saw how robust the ruby color of the liquid was after five minutes, I decided to stop the steep process at five minutes.
In the note that I received from Good Life Tea, they indicate that this tisane is
…a fruit and herbal Tisane with Hibiscus, Rosehips, Coconut and Pineapple. The tropical flavors are tempered and enhanced by ginger and lemongrass.
I’m not getting much pineapple flavor from this tisane, nor am I getting much coconut. Now that I am more than halfway finished with my cup and the cup has had some time to cool, I am starting to pick up more coconut and pineapple-y flavors (and I’m tasting more ginger now too), leading me to believe that this tisane is probably much tastier as an iced tea rather than a hot tea.
That said, I can’t help but think that this would be infinitely better without so much hibiscus in it. If you’re a fan of hibiscus, you would probably find this tisane very much to your liking.
Not my favorite cup, but they can’t all be my favorite. This one is better as it cools. When it’s served hot, the tisane tastes strongly of hibiscus, but once it cools, the tropical flavors that are promised in the above description begin to shine through.
