Passion Fruit Tea

Today's taste test tea is Passion Fruit.

This tea was gifted to me by my brother, David, and sourced from Mecca Coffee Company, of Tulsa Oklahoma.  This is a black tea with passion fruit flavors added and it does not seem to be the same as  Starbucks' passion tea, which, among other things is made with lemonade.  Recipes for Passion Fruit tea tend to start with tea leaves and raw passion fruits.  I found recipes for it using both green and black tea, normally tea bags. Most of the references to passion fruit tea assume you are starting with raw passion fruits, which isn't the case here.  The say you don't need sugar, which would make sense in a tea with raw fruit juice added to it.  

I made 4 cups using the Assam tea press and the black tea setting or boiling, on the smart kettle.  I did a 3 minute brew time.  I added 1 teaspoon of white sugar to the most of the cups.  1st cup was drunk black, 2nd cup with milk, 3rd hot with out sugar and the 4th "cup" was sugared while hot, the poured over ice. 5th "cup" not sugared over ice.  The 4th and 5th "cups" were only  about 4 ounces due to the size of the my ice tea glass and the volume of the ice.

There is a pronounced fruit smell when this tea is being brewed.

1st sip:  Nice fruity taste, bit of an aftertaste

1st full mouthful:  Definite fruit taste, the aftertaste is more pronounced.  It's not a bad aftertaste, it's just there.  This tea isn't sour so the 2nd cup will be drunk with milk.  There isn't much of complex flavor profile and really all it has is the fruit flavor.  It's not a bad fruit flavor, it's just a bit plain.  The tea is only slightly astringent. It's not really a first thing in the morning tea.

2nd cup, with 1/4 cup milk added:  The fruit flavor is even more pronounced if any thing.  The astringency is not noticeable at all with the milk added.  This is my favorite way to have this tea hot.

3rd cup, with out sugar:  Not bad with out sugar, the fruit flavor seems to help here.  Not bitter in the slightest. 

4th cup, iced. It's actually quite good this way.  It actually had some tea flavor when made this way.  I think it's my favorite way to drink this tea overall.

5th cup, iced, but not sugared: Also not bad.  It has the the astringency that not sugared ice tea has.  It's in this form that the tea flavor is most noticeable. 

Would I drink this if offered by a friend? Sure, it's a generic fruit flavored tea.  Would rather take it with milk or iced.

Will I drink this tea again? Yeah, I suspect so.  Mainly as an sweetened iced tea however.

Would I buy this tea?  Maybe, but it's just sorta generic fruit in flavor and have quite a lot of fruit teas on hand due to David's gifting.

Did Explorer the Cat go nuts over this tea?  No.  Didn't  sniff at it at all until I had it iced.  She sniffed at it a few times, then jumped off the desk.

Final verdict:  7.5 out of 10, would drink again as an iced tea or part of a blend for ice tea.