I sure am drinking a lot of tea tonight. This is my second cold steep of the day and I already have another one in the fridge, plus I had matcha this afternoon. I’ve already planned out my evening tea as well, sigh. Hopefully it’s not too much caffeine—usually tea caffeine doesn’t have too much of an effect on me, but 5 cups in one day is more than my usual so we’ll just have to wait and see.
I love melon teas, and I already have two I adore (Butiki’s Cantaloupe & Cream and GMT’s Persian Melon) but they are both white teas and hey, one more can’t hurt! Actually, counting watermelon I probably have way more than 2, but for some reason I don’t count watermelon in the “melon” flavor family. Cantaloupe, honeydew, and stuff closer to that is what I think of when my brain goes to melon. I guess the flavor of watermelon is just really different? It’s also got a really different consistency.
The description doesn’t say what type of melon flavor is used. It smells somewhere between cantaloupe and honeydew, so I’d assume it’s sprite melon. When Japanese snacks are listed as melon flavored that is usually what it is. It’s also got very pale flesh, and the chunks of dried melon in here are white. So, sprite melon oolong! The smell itself is juicy, fresh and enticing but almost candy-ish in its sweetness. I find that true with a lot of Lupicia’s blends, but they rarely have that artificial, sugary-sweet aspect once brewed.
This is no exception, since the taste is pure, delicious, fresh melon! At first I thought the oolong was kind of lost, but as my tea “warmed up” (my fridge is VERY cold!) the oolong popped into the picture. Soft, floral, and very delicious. The melon compliments it perfectly, and it seriously tastes like fresh-squeezed melon juice mixed with green oolong. Perfection! Well, honestly this doesn’t beat out Cantaloupe & Cream, but in its own way it is almost as good!
Cool, I didn’t know about sprite melons!