Sampler Sipdown September! When I woke up this morning (day three of the migraine attack… yaaay), I thought that perhaps I should just sip down that packet of Lapsang Souchang I received in my T2 black tea sampler pack that I didn’t really want; I’ve tried that tea all of once and discovered the heady smoke scent is a migraine trigger for me (smoke of any kind will do this for me; the scent of cigarette smoke off someone’s clothes, lingering burnt incense in the air, the natural forest fire smoke that plagues this area all summer…) Like, if I already have a migraine, may as well just drink it, right? But I have such negative associations with it, and didn’t particularly like the taste either, why drink a tea I don’t even like when I feel like crap already? So instead I set it aside to go into the Discovery Teabox. It’s very small so it shouldn’t take up much weight or space and maybe someone else actually enjoys lapsang souchong, and that solves my problem of being stuck with a tea I’ll never drink.
Then I shifted to what I wanted to accompany my Crunch Berries on coconut milk and realized, that would be a light fruity green tea. So I went through my samplers and found this one. The dry leaf had a strong strawberry scent… yes.
It steeps up a deep yellow color, and I’m surprised how much the tea smells like ripe, juicy strawberries. The dry leaf smelled more soft, like strawberry fluff or marshmallow, but this is full on, off the vine strawberry aroma wafting off my cup. It’s very pleasant! I think what is even more nice, is that when I take a sip of the tea, there is actually green tea present in the taste, and most fruity green teas I try are so overwhelmed by their flavors I don’t even taste the base anymore. This one is not so. The base is very present, and the green leafy taste somehow gives the strawberry note a very “fresh” feel. The base green tea has a very fresh, clean sort of grassy taste, and this is a sampler I got from Lupicia during a Mottainai sale in April… they were clearing out old Christmas samplers! So I’m surprised this tea is tasting so fresh to me. The strawberry comes in midsip, adds a touch of sweetness, and closes out the sip with the subtlest touch of berry tang right at the back of the tongue. The two flavors of the grassy green tea and strawberry compliment each other beautifully and really create this sort of “fresh grown berry” appeal.
I found Tea Chai Te’s Strawberry Sencha a little too mild (though I did really love the sencha in it, and sipped it down easily making iced tea over the summer), and as much as I absolutely adore Tea Chai Te, with this particular blend, I think Lupicia has it beat; they amped up the strawberry just a bit, but not too much, and it seems to be Goldilocks-just-right.
Flavors: Fruity, Grass, Strawberry, Sweet, Sweet, Warm Grass, Tangy
