T2 Fruitalicious Tea Review
T2 have created some truly stunning tea blends. Their jasmine green tea is easily one of my favourites. They can masterfully create the best teas ever. Unfortunately, T2 Fruitalicious is not one of those teas. It let me down on a few different levels, as I’ll explain below.
If you are looking for a fruity tea, or more specifically, a fruit tea without hibiscus, then it could be your saving grace. Read my flavour notes below and don’t forget to follow me on Instagram @izzysden for updates whenever a new tea review is posted!
T2 Fruitalicious Tisane at a Glance
Izzy's Rating
2.6/5
- Blend: A range of tropical and standard fruits, plus natural and artificial flavourings and preservatives
- Flavour: Tart pineapple and generic berries
This tea is pleasant to drink but it doesn’t knock my socks off. For the long list of fruit ingredients, I expected more depth and complexity. Instead, it’s quite generic albeit nice.
Full Review – Fruitalicious by T2 Tea
Izzy's Rating
2.6/5
- Type: Loose fruit tisane
- Ingredients: Apple, dragon fruit, goji berries, chokeberries, papaya, sea buckthorn berries, kiwi, blueberries, pineapple
- Additives: Natural flavouring, artificial flavouring, antioxidant E300, acidifier E334
- Flavour Notes: Tart pineapple, generic berries
- Aroma: Lychee, apple, pineapple hibiscus, goji, generic fruits
- Milk or Lemon: Neither
- Where to Buy: Amazon
The first thing I dislike about this tea is that it’s in a plastic wrapper inside the box. It just cheapens the whole vibe, in my opinion. Thankfully, the plastic doesn’t leave a chemical taste or aroma on this tea. Instead, the aroma is quite delicate to begin with. Notes of lychee, apple, pineapple and hibiscus swirl up from the dry fruit pieces.
As always, I never look at the ingredients list before I brew a tea, so my judgement is completely unclouded.
It brews into a very stringy, fibrous tea. It’s dusty and murky marigold yellow in colour. I ran it through my finest tea strainer before taking the photos, but be prepared for yours to look a little murkier if you only have a simple mesh strainer at home.
Once brewed, the aroma loses complexity. Notes of pineapple, goji berries, and just generic fruitiness are all I can detect. The flavour is pretty similar. The pineapple adds a soft tartness and is complimented nicely by a natural berry flavour, which is pleasant although a bit generic.
Given how long the list of ingredients was, plus the lush name “Fruitalicious”, I expected a lot more from this blend. I will certainly finish drinking the T2 Tealicious that I own, but you won’t see me buying another box!
How to Brew T2 Tealicious
This is purely a fruit tea. There is no tea leaf from the Camellia sinensis plant in this blend. As such, you can use very hot boiling water and leave it to infuse for as long as you like. T2 recommend 3-5 minutes, and I second that. 4 minutes was about right for me.
Make sure you get a good mix of fruit pieces in your tea infuser. T2 recommend using 1 teaspoon of the tea blend per cup. As you can see in my photos, there are fruit chunks in this blend that are easily half a teaspoon in size.
So, try to pick out a bit of everything when you brew it. I found this resulted in approximately 2.5 teaspoons being used per serving.
Why T2 Fruit Tisane Tea Cubes?
I have selected a range of T2 teas to try, and Fruitalicious was among them. I was excited about this tea at first – I’d heard that the tropical flavours were divine. And in a way, they are. But I’m not sure if this is actually from the fruit or from the flavouring.
In this tea blend, T2 use both natural flavourings and artificial flavourings, as well as preservatives and acidifiers. I do not like this. I have tried many fruit teas over the years and many of them were completely free of added flavourings and preservatives.
To me, adding flavourings is a sign of a bad tea blend. You can definitely achieve a great tasting cuppa without them – I’ve discovered this first-hand. Add in the fact that this tea is wrapped in plastic, and suddenly I really don’t like the idea of T2 Fruitalicious.
Overall, despite the large fruit pieces looking awesome, this tea isn’t actually high quality at all.
Summary
If artificial flavours and a little plastic packaging don’t bother you, then go ahead and check out T2 Fruitalicious! I’ve found the loose leaf version on Amazon, so you can buy it in many countries around the world. As far as I know, T2 Fruitalicious is part of the permanent collection at T2 so you can find it on their official website if it’s not available elsewhere.
Tea Recommendation
I always think of fruit teas as afternoon type teas. The sweetness and sugary flavours are best on a lazy Sunday afternoon, sitting outside and reading a good book. If you are looking for a caffeine-free tea that’s best for the evenings, check out all my Sleep Aid Tea Reviews instead.