Hey there Teacups! I’m back today with another Let’s Talk Tea post and this time around I’m going to be reviewing Twist Tea – Strawberry & Rose blend. With the weather getting much hotter here in the UK, for at least half of each week I’m going to do my best to review as many cold brew / iced teas as I can over June, July and August.. Twist Teas very kindly sent me their current cold brew collection along with one of their cold brew bottles to try out, to start of this little group of posts as prepared as possible.
I had such a hard time trying to decide which of the blends in their cold brew collection I wanted to try first because they all sounded good but strawberries are one of my all time favourite fruits so I decided that there Strawberry & Rose blend was the best place for me to start.
Here’s what Twist Tea have to say about this blend over on their website: ”This wonderful blend of strawberry, rose, hibiscus and more on a bed of Chinese white tea is a something really special. This blend has been created specifically to serve cold with sparkling water. (It’s good hot too, of course.)”
Ingredients: Chinese White Tea, Apple Pieces, Rosehip, Hibiscus, Freeze-dried Strawberry (5%), Elderflower, Orange Blossom, Rose Petals, Orange Peel, Natural Flavouring.
Tea Tasting Notes
Though this is part of their cold brew collection for this tasting session I made sure to try it both hot and iced just to see how different both the flavour profile would be after different preparations. There was some very small differences between the two cups but other than the rose being a little stronger in the hot cup, the flavour profiles were incredibly similar. They were both quite delicious but because I don’t like hot hibiscus I did prefer the iced / cold brewed cup more than I did the hot one. Which I wasn’t surprised by at all as this is a tea that is meant to be cold brewed I think I knew going into this that this blend was going to be at its best when prepared that way.
When its iced the stand out notes are the strawberry, apple and hibiscus and while I could pick out the white tea it wasn’t a stand out and could do with being a bit stronger. The only thing I wish I could change about this blend is making that white tea a little bit more of a stand out. There is lots of different things in the blend and it does at times feel a little bit lost. I’d also make the rose a little strong as when its iced as it is a little bit light and if it had have been on the same level strength wise as the strawberries it would have been a perfectly balanced blend. The trouble with adding hibiscus into a blend like this with subtler elements like white tea and rose is that it can easily overpower them.
You can pick the tea and the rose out when you steep it hot but the other elements in the blend don’t work very well when prepared that way. Because of the added apple and the natural subtle sweetness of the white tea this is not a blend that you need to add sweetener into unless you have an insane sweet tooth. To me adding honey or any other sweetness into this blend would overpower it’s subtler notes especially when its iced. On their website, Twist Tea do recommend trying this with sparkling water which I think I will have to try soon because something tells me if I were to add a mixture of rose sparkling water and strawberry sparkling water to this it would be delicious and it would strengthen those two notes as well.
This is one I would purchase again as it was tasty and I enjoyed drinking it iced on the day I did this tasting session as it was incredibly hot here in the UK and it was really refreshing which helped to cool me down as well. It’s a perfect summer blend as one that you could very easily experiment with. I myself don’t drink alcohol but something tell me that this would be nice infused in gin or something like that and you could definitely make a delicious cocktail with it.
Overall Teacup Rating: 4.7/5
If you want to find out more about Twist Teas and purchase some of this blend for yourself, you can do both here. As always if you have any questions at all either stick them in the comments or send them to me on Twitter/Instagram @teaisawishblog and I’ll do my best to answer them all as soon as I can.
Speak to you all again soon. Happy Steeping – Kimberley
*The tea featured in this post was gifted to me for the purpose of this review. All opinions are my own and have not been paid for.*
