Apple & Berry

This is the last of this – me and my friend did a good job cleaning out the most of this tin when we were huddled under the covers in autumnal Venice. It did an exceptional job being our foremost biennale tea, however.

This is a potential restock in spite of its lower grade, because it’s been with me for so long (and we’ve done so much together, on three continents, no less) that I feel very attached to it.

Maybe next time the berries will show up for the party.

[Purchased at Lupicia in Honolulu, December 2012.]
[Polished off in Rome, January 2014.]

I should probably stop buying fruit-flavoured green teas. They almost always disappoint me. The descriptions always make me think they should taste so good, and then I do taste them and… sigh

The leaves were very encouraging. They have pretty red bits all through them, and there was a strong aroma of apples as soon as I opened the packet. The aroma dissipated a lot in the brewed tea, so by the time I came to drink it there was only a faint aroma left. Then I tasted it and discovered the main problem with this tea: I can’t taste the fruit in it at all. The flavour is not quite that of unadulterated green tea, but that something else is so indistinct that the only reason I know it’s meant to be apples is because that’s what it says on the packet.

If they’d managed to translate a little of that fabulous apple aroma from the dry leaves into the taste of the brew, this might just have been a fabulous tea. As it is, meh.

Got this freebie teabag last time I went into Lupicia. Dry, it smells like applesauce. It steeps up to a nice golden color, but doesn’t really carry through with that apple flavor. It’s more like drinking a savory green tea base with a slight hint of apple joining the party. The berries might have RSVP’d but they certainly didn’t show up.

Apples and berries should make for a tasty combination, shouldn’t it? Sweet apple mixed with delicious berries that give just a hint of tartness. However, apples, berries, and grass? Not such an awesome blend and unfortunately it’s the grassy notes that stand out. Plus, the apple sweetness is very strong and has no berry tartness to keep it in check. It’s just not what I hoped for when I brewed this up this morning.

I guess I would describe this tea as slightly berry tasting, slightly apple tasting, and slightly vegetal tasting. It’s fairly good but not spectacular. I will have to cold brew it as an iced tea and see how it is.

I brewed this once in an 18oz teapot with 3 tsp leaf and 175 degree water for 2 min.

An ok tea, more berry than apple tasting to me and you can tell its a green tea. It smelled fruitier before steep and now that it’s steeped has an weird apple like smell. It’s not bad but I don’t like this one much. The Apple aftertaste is nice though.

Another that came as a sample from my classmate. It smelled so nice as leaves. Brewed- there is mostly a berry scent, with some apple. In the flavour, the berry still comes out more. Mostly, it’s just a sweet green tea.

Got this as a sample in Lupicia’s newsletter a while back. Dry, the smell is spot-on for apple and strawberry. I only get a hint of apple in the brew. Otherwise, it’s just a regular, everyday green. Lupicia’s flavoured blacks are almost always delicious and taste authentically of what they’re supposed to be, but their flavoured greens (with the exception of Momoko) need work, and this is one of them. Nothing wrong with it, but nothing all that exciting either.