I had rooibos tea (pronounced roy-boss, or if you’re me, roo-bose) first during my grad school interviews (now that I think about it, that was a major turning point in my tea drinking habits…). Not actually from the tea plant, but instead the African red bush plant, grown in one small location in South Africa, this is considered an herbal tea.

The flavour is strikingly like a nuttier and lighter hybrid of black & white tea, but still yet unplaceably different. I’ve always had it in tea bag form, and my favorite brand of that is Twinings African Rooibos Red Tea (in fact, I’ve generally enjoyed everything from their Origins line, well, minus the Lapsang Souchong, but that’s really not their fault). I went through a half year phase where I had a cup of rooibos every night before bed, and knew I needed to run to the Upper West Side to stock up on tea whenever I got to my last box of rooibos.

So, of course, as part of my first order of loose-leaf teas from Adagio, I had to get a box of the rooibos and see how it compares. I tried it last, after I had tried the various green & black teas, nearly all of which had astounded me with their quality & taste. The rooibos? Not so impressed…

But when I threw the rooibos (loose leaf pictured above) in… it came out looking this:

What the hell is this? Why on earth does boiled loose leaf rooibos look like mealworms (p.s. don’t click on that link while eating or planning on eating anytime soon)?

And worse even; I don’t normally strain my tea. My mom’s a bit of a obsessive-compulsive tea drinker, and she doesn’t use a strainer (of course, we only drank green tea in the house too). Not normally straining my tea means I don’t actually own a tea strainer/tea infuser/teaball/(insert tea contraption here). So I’m at a bit of a loss on what to do with this rooibos that pretty obviously needs to be strained. I ended up pouring it into one of my smaller french presses (I own 3 french presses but that… is another story altogether) and straining out the floating teaworms.

The taste? Unpleasantly hinged with a little hint of coffee (yeah, I know, I was asking for it). But even the bit I tried it without straining… its just not that special. If the leaves are this small anyways, I don’t imagine teabags to lose that much taste (unlike green teas in particular). The Twinings frankly tasted better and was alot less work. But perhaps I’m also not brewing it strong enough. More taste-tests, after I go out and get meself a tea infuser, but for now, I will still be making my bimonthly trek out to the Upper West Side and lug back ~10 boxes of tea….

This entry was posted on Monday, March 17th, 2008 at 9:42 am and is filed under Review, Tea.