King of Fruits

Weirdly, when I was at the Lupicia store this tea was called “King and I”. Unless I was mixed up and they have another durian tea. I dunno.

Enjoying a nice big pot of this, laughing at the memories of this christmas – I took a tumbler of this tea over for christmas eve dinner and terrorized everyone. I thought this tea smells tasty fruity yummy, everyone else was “uggg durian!” FOOOLS!

Something I did notice with this tea – the scent likes to linger in teaware despite rinsing. It stuck in my Steeper and my tumbler – I had to soapy water and baking soda scrub to get the smell out. I didn’t do that for my tumbler and it made my next tea taste like durian.

Rayn and I are having an exciting Friday night…of drinking teas and watching Avatar episodes. Okay, so it’s exciting for me!

I have to say that I don’t care for durian, as a fruit. The smell is, to put it nicely, kind of revolting. I once sat next to someone on the bus ride home who had a fresh durian with them, and by the time I got home I thought I was going to puke. Essentially, the taste is decent but the smell is not. However, I’d read/heard so many good things about this tea that I figured I had to at least try it. After all, I once tried durian ice cream and that was actually not so bad, since the smell was not as pervasive.

So I opened the dry tea up, smelled it, and went yuck durian! But I told myself to be brave, scooped out a few teaspoons and brewed a cup. And it’s good. Really tasty, in fact. Once the tea is brewed it’s like it loses the nasty durian smell and just retains the delicious tropical fruit smell/flavor.

It can happen…durian tea can be good!

I heard that durian is a love or hate fruit. I’m in the “love durian” camp. I love it’s overripe guava-like, vanilla-custardy scent and texture. I think it’s a delicious (and insanely healthy) fruit. And I am so happy to know that Lupicia has it in tea form!

The flavor is decidedly durian! The flavor is right-on. Yay! I am not disappointed. And it is definitely “powerfully fragrant”. :)

The aftertaste really is like a “fruity onion”, as Mad_Alyss_14 so aptly stated. I love that description. There’s this “shrill” hint of freshly cut onion in the flavor and aroma…it’s intriguing. Like melon and onions. I know oniony tea sounds weird but it’s good!

The green tea base seems fresh and is slightly astringent. My loose leaf sample looks like fannings, though—like shredded leaves from a tea bag.

I’m enjoying my sample and will buy a full tin soon!

It makes me wish good, fresh durian were easier to come by here. All we can get easily is the frozen stuff.

I got a sample of this in the mail today with my Lupicia magazine! Oooh durian… I have never tried durian fruit before, frankly because I was scared to death of the horrible stories I have heard of it having a very pungent, nasty smell so I have never bothered trying it! Getting this tea in had me scared, I thought I would open the pack of tea to smell dirty feet or something LOL, but it was actually pleasent and sweet smelling…smelled like a fruit of some sort…I guess a durian since it is a durian tea! Haha. The green tea was present as well and was enjoyable; I did have this iced and my toddler liked it as well. However, I wouldn’t buy this for me because I have other fruity green teas that I simply like better, but this one is pretty darn good!

I AM in LOVE!
Just LOVE. Lupicia NEVER lets me down!
Imagine every amazing tropical fruit EVER but it is in just ONE KING of fruits!
BLISS!!!!!!!

The Final Sipdown: Day 5
Decupboarding Total: 9

Does it count as decupboarding if I didn’t know I had this tea in the first place? It was a total surprise to me to find this tea under some sample tins. Oops.

I opened the little freebie Lupicia bag expecting a teabag. Because every Lupicia freebie since the dinosaurs died off has been a teabag. So yeah, it made a bit of a mess when I opened this because not a tea bag. Loose leaf. Double oops.

Though… it doesn’t look like actual loose leaf. The leaves are small and broken it looks like they just forgot the bag part of the teabag. Of course, I must keep in mind that I did find this little packet under some small tins. So it might not have started out so… powdery. Triple oops?

Fortunately, most of the leaf-related mess stayed on the kitchen counter where I was able to scoop it up and dump in the teapot. (I am a total nerd so I did weigh it first. 3.4g. I continue to appreciate Lupicia’s realistic grasp of how much leaf it takes to make a cup of tea.)

The packaging, leaf and tea (and now my entire kitchen) smell strongly of lychee. Not lychee tea, but actual lychee. See, a while back I had some of Samovar’s lychee tea. It was nice but I couldn’t speak to how realistic the flavor was, so when I was at the grocery store a few weeks later and saw actual lychee I picked up a couple. This tea smells exactly like a fresh lychee fruit ones it has been removed from its shell (husk? rind?). Of course, this isn’t supposed to be lychee tea. It’s supposed to be durian. But I don’t know what a durian is so to me? Lychee tea.

The tea is a bit bitter. But honestly, I don’t think that’s the tea’s fault. I think that the fault of whoever put it under some tea tins and crunched on the leaves for a while. (Yes, that’s me.) I think if the leaf were whole (or at least more than it is now), the bitterness wouldn’t be there. So leaving the bitterness aside, what about the rest of the taste?

Lychee. Full on lychee.

As always, the flavoring Lupicia does is very nice. It’s strong but I can still taste tea under there. (Aside from the bitterness from the broken leaves, yes, there is tea taste there! Yay!) Also, the durian lychee tastes absurdly natural. No chemical taste, no funky aftertaste, nothing. Like I actually just ate the fruit (or pureed it into my tea). And that’s pretty awesome.

Normally I have an issue with flavored green teas. It just seems wrong to me so it is pretty hard for me to love them. I guess I’m a green tea purist. This though? Very tasty. I could do without the bitterness but again, I’m not blaming the tea for that. In fact, the flavoring is so nicely done (and it doesn’t hurt that I apparently like lychee) that I would like to buy some of this so I can try it without the crushed-leaf-induced bitterness.

I received this sample in the mail a couple of weeks ago.

The aroma of this tea is amazing… so delicious that it made my mouth water just smelling the dry leaf. This fragrance softens a little with the brewed liquor, but, fortunately, it doesn’t soften a lot. I can still smell a delicious fruity scent that is unlike anything I’ve ever smelled before.

Delicious! The green tea is a little buttery, sweet, and lends itself well to the Durian fruit – something I’ve never actually tasted, but am enjoying the taste of it now! Sweet, juicy and delicious. Tropical-like. Very good.

Sipdown no. 48 for the year 2014. A sample of loose tea in a single serving packet rather than a teabag. Guessing at water temp, and I also think I slightly oversteeped though I was shooting for 1.5 minutes.

Sometimes I wonder how I managed to live as long as I have on this planet, have been reasonably well-educated, etc. and not have knowingly eaten certain things. One of these is durian. I’ve heard of it, but never tried it. I looked it up and found a lot of references to “the world’s stinkiest fruit.”

The dry leaf smells like a forest—like pine or fir trees. Steeped, there’s more of a melon-y aroma, sort of like… mango? Not a lot of aroma attributable to the green tea base. The liquor is orangish-yellow.

The flavor is not tart so much as a tad bitter; to carry on with the tree description, it rather reminds me of the bitterness in the flavor of pine needles when I crunched them between my teeth as a kid. There’s a sort of mellowness underneath the bitterness, though that isn’t entirely unpleasant.

Not really for me, but I’m glad I got a chance to try it and I’d also now like to try an actual durian.

Lupicia has a new tea for all you to try; Durian Tea! I have had the unpleasant pleasure of trying the Durian fruit before when someone brought it to work and i still occasionally have nightmares about it :/
So naturally I was a little skeptical to try this tea. Right when you open the package your nose is greeted with the most amazing sweet aroma. Lupicia was able to take that pungent, icky smell out and replace it with the more fruity and sweeter notes that the Durian has. The taste is also awesome. It sends me to a tropical paradise! The Thai green tea i think is a perfect match for this tea since it isn’t harsh on the flavours or doesnt mask them either. The after taste is kind of interesting, to me its kinda like a fruity onion, but with not so much onion, but still pleasent and enjoyable. This tea is also awesome as iced tea, so i recommend you try both ways. If you have had Durian before and actually like it this tea might not be what your looking for. I definetly would recommend this tea to anyone. Don’t knock it until you try it!

Omg loved it! It tasted just like the durian fruit