Pondi Cherry is a herbal fruit blend featuring cherries, cranberries, raspberries, elderberries, hibiscus and blackberries. This herbal tea is from New Mexico Tea Company.
Similar to the Lady Hannah tea review, this 1oz sampler wasn’t labelled, thus my terrible handwritten label. I keep a stack of labels next to the tea stash as I stick on notes about the tea, like steeping instruction changes.
DRY LEAF: Well.. not actually leaf in this tea. Dried fruit chunks and bits? Yeah!
The smell of Pondi Cherry is like sweet cherry fruit leather. Mmmm! I made fruit leather once. I snacked on most of it while it was in the dehydrator! Ooops!
Steeping Instructions: I followed the instructions off the website – 6 minutes at 212F for Pondi Cherry tea.
Pink owl is impressed with the colour!
While we wait the 6 minutes for the steeping, Pink owl and I ate some cherries!
The result is.. well… the tea smells pretty tart.
TASTE: TARRRRRT! I knew it was going to be tart, but I was also hoping it wasn’t going to be tart, so I let my tart-guard down. Pondi Cherry tastes like watered down sour cherries. 7 or 8/10 on the Tart-o-meter. This tartness might be drinkable for some and I can sort of sip it, but no thanks.
SWEETENED: I added german rock sugar to make this tea not as tart.
It’s still slightly tart, 3/10 on the Tart-o-meter. The main flavor here is cherry, yay! The cherry flavor is similar to fruit punch cherry juice. I can taste a bit of tart raspberry and as well as juicy blackberries. Throughout the sip, lots of hibiscus! Pondi Cherry finishes off with a pretty strong tart dryness to the throat, say a 6/10 on the dry-o-meter. No flatness or bitterness in this tea.
Okay okay, I purchased this tea not to drink hot. This is iced tea bait!
ICED TEA: Pondi Cherry iced is more cherry and hibiscus in flavor, with the other berry flavors not very noticable. Again, this tea finishes off with dryness, but not as bad, say a 4/10 on the Dry-o-meter. I think I added too much ice as it was a little weak.
COMMENTS: Pondi Cherry is pretty cool for being a cherry herbal, setting it apart from the usual strawberry and orange fruit only teas. What I really like about this tea was it wasn’t flat compared to a few other fruit herbals I’ve had. The berry mix is quite nice and the cherry flavor is great. There is a dry aftertaste, but to be expected with all that tart going on.
If you like a bit of tart, or looking for a caffeine free fruit herbal, Pondi Cherry is cherrytastic!
Bonus pic!
