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Only a few weeks ago, I was getting excited about pear and jasmine as a perfect flavour combination. I even compared the sublimity of the partnership to the Chuckle Brothers, so you know I meant business. Well, this fruity tisane also contains pear and jasmine flowers and yet fails to elicit the same level of excitement.
The big difference between Bird & Blend’s Jasmine Poached Pear and this here Pear Cider tea is that the first one contains actual tea. Apparently when you take Camelia sinensis leaves out of the equation, the whole thing becomes a bit meh.
I have previously described non-tea “teas” as being ‘a cup of delicately scented hot water’ and this tea is the perfect example of that. The blend looks and smells gorgeous when it’s still in the packet. But once you’ve gone through the process of steeping it in hot water, you’re left with a cup of nothing really at all.
The packet says that this blend is ‘perfect for cold brewing’. They love a cold brew over at Bird & Blend. They’re always recommending it. They even sell bottles designed specifically for the purpose of steeping your blends in cold water and then fridging them for six hours.
And look, I’m not saying that people shouldn’t do that if it makes them happy. But such shenanigans have no place here at TeaFancier.com. The only reason that fruit and herbal tisanes get to hang around in tea circles is because they’re trying to pass themselves off as cups of tea. I mean, they’re frequently sold as tea bags for a start. And even when, like, in this case, it’s a loose blend, the process of steeping the stuff in a tea pot and drinking it out of a tea cup all adds to the illusion that there is some kind of tea experience going on.
Once you started steeping the stuff in San Pellegrino or lemonade or whatever, any delusions of teaness are gone. Actual iced tea is a different matter but dried pear, apple, rose hips, orange peel, lime leaves and jasmine blossom steeped in cold water and drunk out of a glass? That’s not tea. That’s hipster squash.
Today’s featured book is the The Cider House Rules by John Irving.
