Lupicia

I sincerely loved this tea, which I bought some time ago in Japan. A strong floral scent, with a fair amount of peach, hides an unexpected depth of flavor, with light bitter tones that are appreciated throughout the drink. I don’t particularly appreciate this type of tea, but I must say that it really surprised me with its beautiful character!

So Vallhallow was kind enough to gift me a bunch of Lupicia teas that she wanted to rehome, thank you! And a bunch of them are from her Japan order, including this one! Yeeee! This is named after and inspired by Portuguese glass, which is apparently a popular souvenir in Nagasaki. Interesting! The pink and blue konpeito are so cute and festive, and I love the colors together.

Flavor-wise, it’s a lychee and grapefruit black tea, and it’s delightful! I can taste both flavors clearly, and the bright grapefruit and syrupy, floral lychee make a great pairing. The grapefruit is prominent at the beginning of the sip, but then there’s a lovely sweet lychee finish. I will say it looks like there’s some Darjeeling here, as there are a few green leaves interspersed among the brown ones in the spent leaf. So maybe next time I’ll experiment with a slightly lower temperature to see how that affects the flavor of the base. Looking forward to sipping through this one, and trying the others as well!

Sipdown! (7 | 7)

One of my oldest teas down, yay! This was purchased in the spring of 2021.

For some reason I’ve just never loved this tea, which is why it stuck around for so long. I think it’s the salted aspect of it, which I do enjoy with sencha, but find a bit odd with hojicha. There is a noticeable salinity and slippery texture, and I just don’t love it with the toasty base. Obubu has a hoji sakura sencha sometimes and I definitely prefer that one, but I do tend to prefer Obubu’s sakura teas in general because there is no sugar or salt, only dried blossoms and leaves. But Lupicia’s Sakura & Berry is still a favorite, and one that I will repurchase in the spring! :)

Day 23 of the Lupicia advent calendar, a single sachet. Lupicia recommends having this blend with milk, so I added a splash of oat milk. Despite my hesitations due to this being an Assam and likely to hurt my stomach, I’m finding it hard not to finish the whole mug! It’s just a very smooth, easy drink. Nutty, malty, with a caramel note that really rounds it out. Bad for me but I’d recommend it for others!

This was the last tea in this calendar. Day 22 was a small handkerchief bag with a pattern similar to the calendar graphic. Very pretty, very cute, definitely going into the rotation as a tea towel (it can be folded flat). Day 24 is a tiny ceramic plate with a dove holding a holly branch in his beak. It’s beautiful and precious. I’m not sure what its purpose is, tbh. Maybe a spoon rest? It’s a bit too small to be a teabag rest. Pretty enough to just be something I add to my teaware display shelf more than use practically. Or maybe use it as a plate for a small tea pet.

This calendar turned out to be delightful! When I opened the first couple of days and they were just single servings of tea, I started to worry that I had radically overspent. Including the cost of shipping, etc., this ran me about $130. If it turned out that I had paid $5.42 for a single serving a day, I would have been… disappointed. But that wasn’t the case! This turned out to be full of variety and surprises – tasty snacks, fun items, and a tin. There were blends in here that I can’t get in the US at all. The packaging itself is stunning and sturdy. The boxes make a beautiful image when they’re all turned around. I’ll probably keep the box and refill it myself next year – it’s too pretty to only use once. I’m not really sure how to assess whether I got my money’s worth because so much of this is unquantifiable. How do I calculate the monetary value of trying a tea that I otherwise can’t get? Or a calendar-exclusive item? In an objective sense, it probably wasn’t quite worth the money. In Lupicia’s defense, the cost of the calendar sans shipping was $76, which it was definitely worth. Subjectively, I got a lot of enjoyment out of this! I won’t pretend that I actually regret spending the money. If it wasn’t for the shipping cost, I would put this on my list for next year, but given that added expense I’ll probably try something different in this slot next time.

Day 21 of the Lupicia advent calendar. Five sachets of this one! Plus it’s an herbal, which means I’ll likely get through it pretty quickly. More than anything this makes me think of churchkhela. This makes no sense because there’s no grape or nuts in here! Maybe it’s the texture or the exact degree of sweetness? If I really focus my palate and actively tell it to ignore the association, I can tell that peach and mandarin orange are the two dominant notes in my cup. In this case, though, I don’t really want to do that! First of all because it’s pretty hard, and second because I’m enjoying it exactly as it is so why torture myself in order to get less pleasure from the cup in the interest of having a more accurate tasting experience while sitting around watching Star Trek?

Day 20 of the Lupicia advent calendar. Another single-serving loose leaf fruit tisane. This one reminds me so strongly of jelly fruit slices. Candied orange with a sweet yuzu tartness. Right on the verge of being too sweet, but it isn’t. The Jus T’aime blends seem to be a candy-fruit range of tisanes, all on the sweet side with some tipping into syrupy (looking at you, Mystique). I really like some of these, though, and think they’d be great as iced teas for hot weather!

Day 19 of the Lupicia advent calendar. This is a rooibos blend and came in a single sachet. So fruit tisanes have all been loose, but I guess not all herbal blends fall into that category. I’m a sucker for sparkly sprinkles. That was a fun part of this blend! Flavor-wise, I’m getting peach and plum. For some reason, the aroma of the two together read as “fresh mango” at first. I think this might be the first rooibos in this calendar so far!

Catching up on tasting notes! I haven’t been able to post much in the past few days, but I’ve been jotting down notes as I drink.

Day 18 of the Lupicia advent calendar. Day 17 was a three-dimensional pin shaped like a Lupicia travel tin. It took a lot of restraint to not try to open it! It’s very cute though. This blend comes in a single serving of loose leaf. The wrapper says “pear & lychee.” Flavor’s pretty accurate to that! It’s a very candy-like pear and lychee, but not sickly sweet. I’d buy this! I bet it would be great as an iced tea in the summer.

Day 16 of the Lupicia advent calendar. Just a single sachet, thankfully. I have done it, everyone. I have found Lupicia’s worst tea by a mile (or kilometer, or any other measure of distance). I brewed this as instructed, which feels really important to note here. This was not an overbrew. Upon taking my first sip, I exclaimed “WHY” to an empty room. It’s just a mouthful of clove. The cloviest clove that ever cloved. Somewhere behind the clove is maybe a hint of citrus, if you can make it past the sea of clove to find it. I think my cup personally has all of the clove flavor that others could barely detect in theirs. I felt guilty about pouring this out because the calendar was so expensive, but I found it literally undrinkable. I forced down a few sips for science. That was the most I could manage.

Day 14 of the Lupicia advent calendar, one loose leaf serving. Y’all. This is so syrupy. The blackcurrant flavor is overwhelming for me. I let it cool and turned it into a tea soda. Which was the preferable way to enjoy it. Definitely helped cut the sweetness and viscosity. Even at half-tea/half-seltzer, that blackcurrant flavor stayed strong. Glad I got to try this but probably wouldn’t have it again.

Day 13 of the Lupicia advent calendar, single sachet. I paired this with Day 15, kinako-coated peanuts. The pattern for snacks here seems to be “peanuts with various coatings.” I’m not complaining, they’ve all been quite tasty so far! When I saw the description of this, I thought it would take oat milk well and that was a correct assessment. Creamy white chocolate, malty base, hint of nuttiness and a touch of vanilla. I see other (mostly older) tasting notes mentioning apricot flavor. Not sure whether Lupicia has reformulated the blend, the oat milk is drowning that note, or I’m just not picking up on it, but I don’t taste any apricot here.

Day 12 of the Lupicia advent calendar, one sachet of this. What am I even drinking? I tried to find an ingredients list and couldn’t. I couldn’t even find a specific flavor description outside of people’s tasting notes here. I’m getting maybe raspberry, grape, and apricot on a slightly tannic base? Generally in the stone fruit and tart berry vicinity. The gimmick here isn’t working for me, mostly because what if there’s an ingredient that someone is allergic to or otherwise can’t have? It’s a pleasant enough fruity black tea but the mystery-ingredients thing makes this a no for me.

Day 11 of the Lupicia advent calendar. I think the pattern here is that the herbal blends are loose and the teas are sachets. There was enough loose leaf to make one mug. I feel like I’m overusing “tart” as a descriptor. I need more precise language to articulate different kinds of tartness. The tangy, almost sour tartness of raspberry is different from the tartness of pineapple, for example. This brews up pineapple-tart and almost too sweet. Tastes exactly like I’d expect from the ingredients!

Day 10 of the Lupicia advent calendar. There’s a whole pretty travel tin of this, which is very exciting! The art is beautiful. Day 9 was matcha-covered peanuts; I noshed on some today while drinking this. The Lupicia website suggests that this blend is good as an iced tea. I set it up as a cold brew first thing this morning and actually starting drinking it about 7 hours later. It’s like a green tea version of Jingle Bells. That same juicy grape flavor is dominant, over a smooth and slightly grassy base. I know they say there’s citrus flavor in here, but I’m just not picking up on any. Which I’m fine with, actually. I do like this as a cold brew and it’ll probably get finished off quickly once the weather heats up.

Day 8 of the Lupicia advent calendar. There’s one sachet of this, which I’m actually totally fine with. When I realized that this is a classic-style black tea blend that includes Darjeeling and therefore has a high likelihood of pain, I decided to give it to my iron-stomached black-tea-drinking partner instead. He asked for it as a cold brew, so it brewed overnight in the fridge. I had a few sips for science and the rest was his. This was very low on the astringency, perhaps because we cold brewed it. The best way I can describe it is “like Lipton but better.” It tastes like a standard black tea but smoother and a little fruity. Report from partner: “I added some agave, it was fine, it just tasted like black tea.”

Day 7 of the Lupicia advent calendar. Day 6 was some very pretty and nice quality Lupicia-branded washi tape. I wasn’t expecting stationery in here, but it was a very pleasant surprise. Looking forward to finding excuses to put it on everything!

I’ve never had this blend before. Wasn’t sure what to expect. Somehow wasn’t really expecting the very strong grape aroma that escaped as soon as I opened the bag. Oh! For those keeping track, the Matcha au Lait came as a single serving, loose, in a pouch. The Jingle Bells came in pyramid sachet format, just one today. Anyway, back to the tea itself – this is easily one of the better teas in this advent so far. That grape aroma carries through into the flavor, with a strong juicy grape flavor at the front of the sip and a white wine note at the back. I’m not sure this would work as well on any other base – the grape is very sweet, and it really needs the astringency of the base to keep it from tipping into unpleasantness. It’s nice hot but I liked it even better cold; the grape and wine flavors really pop as an iced tea. “Jingle Bells” seems like a little bit of a misnomer, only because this seems more like a New Year’s tea than a Christmas blend to me. But I’m probably splitting hairs.

The little packet doesn’t make it clear that this has sugar added, though it’s pretty obvious from context and they do include that information in the online description of it. The powder is dull green and clumpier than regular matcha. The instructions are… optimistic. It basically says to combine powder with milk, stir 10 times, microwave, stir 10 times again, and voilà! Admittedly I used oat milk instead of regular, but I don’t think that was the issue. It just wasn’t dissolving well with a spoon. Eventually I switched to stirring with a fork, which helped, but it definitely took more than 10 stirs to get everything fully dissolved. (This was a good reminder that I need to replace our broken frother.) The finished beverage is still a dull green. Not greyish, but definitely more washed out than some of the better matchas I’ve had. I think we can reasonably conclude that this blend uses culinary grade matcha. Which is fine for a latte, I suppose. It’s just sort of generally nondescript. Not bad, just not very interesting. It tastes like every matcha latte you’ve ever gotten from a coffee shop. I can confirm the caffeine content here is pretty high. By the time I was nearing the bottom of the cup, my hands were shaking even though I had recently eaten.

Day 3 of the Lupicia advent calendar. This calendar is beautiful but it’s also chaotic and I can’t decide whether I like that or find the inconsistency frustrating. Day 1 had a single pyramid sachet. Day 2 was loose leaf. Now day 3 has something like 5 pyramid sachets. No clear rhyme or reason! Maybe they’re just using the calendar to clear out dead stock, so the format and quantity depends on what they’ve got enough excess of? We shall see how the rest of this shakes out.

As for this specific tea, it’s a vanilla-scented Ceylon black tea. Surprisingly, it didn’t hurt my stomach, so good news there. Helpful for trying to narrow down what I can and can’t safely drink. I did eat beforehand and had this with a cinnamon roll as a precaution, but precautions didn’t help with Carol so… if I was smart, I’d just pass on the black teas, but I’m stubborn and want to try all the advent teas! I tried this with no additives and found it fine but not great. The vanilla feels more like just a whiff of vanilla during the sip, though it does linger pleasantly on the palate. It’s a nice, pillowy vanilla, with no weird edge or aftertaste to it. The base seems pretty nondescript to me. It’s astringent, and sort of generically black-tea-flavored, if that makes sense. This did pair well with a sweet dessert, though! I can see this being well-suited to being an accompaniment to dessert after a hearty meal. Next time, I’ll try it with a splash of oat milk.

Day 2 of the Lupicia advent calendar. This is supposed to be rose and strawberry flavored? I get the strawberry, but rose is probably too delicate a flavor for a blend with this much hibiscus in it. I’m getting tart hibiscus, I’m getting candy-sweet strawberry, but I’m not getting anything in the light floral range. I like hibiscus, so I’m enjoying this, but I don’t think the flavor quite matches the description. And now that I’m reaching the bottom of the mug, I’m starting to get tired of the hibiscus.

Day 1 of the Lupicia advent calendar, which arrived yesterday and is gorgeous. It seems to only have one teabag for each of the tea days, though, which seems a bit sparse given the cost (not counting what it cost me to obtain and ship it). I also can’t believe it’s Dec. 6 and I’m already behind on my tasting notes! Not even because this calendar just arrived. With any luck, I can catch up over the weekend.

I can see why people love this blend! The moment I opened the sachet, a sweet vanilla-strawberry scent puffed up at me. It translates into the cup, too. The vanilla and strawberry flavors pair beautifully. The base carries them well. It’s present and slightly tannic, but in a way that grounds the flavors rather than detracting from them. It’s more of a jammy strawberry than a fresh strawberry flavor. I added oat milk after a few sips, and that turned this into something that reminds me a lot of vanilla-strawberry ice cream. The down side is that the base did make my stomach hurt, despite my precaution of eating properly before drinking. So maybe it’s ok that the advent only has one teabag per day?

November Sipdown Prompt – a tea for which you are especially thankful

Happy Thanksgiving for those who celebrate! I am thankful for all my Steepster peeps – more than you know.

Apparently the point of this tea is that they don’t tell you what the flavors are, and I am a bit rubbish at pinning flavors down. What I do know, and Ashman concurred, is that it tastes like a black tea version of Jardin Sauvage, a green rooibos tea that we both enjoy very much. Mostly I get mango but I thought I got a bit of banana once in the first cup.

This morning I asked Ashman what he wanted for our breakfast tea and he said he wanted something with fruit or berry flavors. We only drank about half of the big pot because we had a lot to do to get lunch ready.

After lunch, we wanted to have tea with our pound cake and instead of making a new pot I offered to heat it (calm down calm down) by mixing it with my cold steeped English Breakfast from Rare Tea Co. Cache-cache was room temp at that point. The strange thing was that even with 12 ounces of a good black tea added, I fully tasted Cache-cache. It was delicious with our pound cake and homemade ice cream.

Now that’s more like it!

This was a sample I received with my Lupicia Christmas (mostly) and I was really excited to get it.

A while back I purchased Harney and Sons Salted Caramel tea blend with high hopes, but they were dashed. The aroma was fantastic but the base tea was weak and the caramel flavor was just meh. I added black tea to it to make it more drinkable.

This was just what I was hoping for. The tea base is plenty strong enough but doesn’t need additives to tame it. The caramel is rich and true in aroma AND taste. I would definitely purchase this so the sample worked. I will wait until my cupboard is a little more in control, though.

Where did I get this tea? A TTB? A swap? A homemade advent?! I don’t know! But I’m glad I found it while preparing my lil basket of seasonally curated teas, because it was exactly what I wanted with lunch today.

The sweet, buttery, almost toffee-like chestnut flavor reminds me SO strongly of the caramel almond brittle pieces in Ben & Jerry’s non-dairy ice cream of the same name. In a good way, because that ice cream is delicious. I wouldn’t have expected to enjoy this flavor palette on a sencha, but I really like the contrast between the sweet chestnut bits and the gently grassy base. It’s all very smooooth.

I will say that the sweet chestnut flavor is almost at the edge of cloying for me, so I’m glad I made a small cuppa for the afternoon! But all in all a nice holiday-feeling tea that’s not just like, cinnamon and cloves. Heh.

A sample with my order?! Yes, please! This smells so very caramel like. It says English, but my brain thinks French because it reminds me of Fauchon’s caramel tea. The flavor was rich on the sip with roasty caramel, but there is something alkaline in the finish. The flavor seems to get a little more hollow and flat as it cools. Definitely better when hot. Maybe I’ll resteep and try adding some creamer. I don’t know that I’d buy this one since I have a similar caramel in my cupboard, but I wouldn’t pass up another cup either.