Lupicia

I love caffeine free alternatives because I drink a lot of tea and like some at night. This one has a sweet nutty taste. Almost like hazelnut but not really.

Suprised by its desert like qualities.

Very strong vibrant flavor. Great with just a touch of sugar.

Ohhhhh very deep texture flavor with rounded qualities. Makes you just want to stare mindfully and sigh. It is a very spiritually relaxing tea making it great for an early morning or post-breakfast.

Very sweet taste. The aroma is too much like an artificially sweetened candy for my taste. Flavors of green tea in it its best qualities. Does not taste like a cheap Kirkland green.

Pleasantly floral and smooth. Very light fluffiness to it.

Oh pu’er, what am I to do with you? Hold my nose and drink, apparently.

One whiff of this tea in my cup and I’m reminded of why I don’t like pu’ers. I smell the notorious earthy scent of the pu’er, along with a decent amount of sweetness. I can almost smell the chocolate, but not quite, and I don’t think I can get any strawberry or fruitiness at all. It all mixes to a generic sweet attempting to balance out the pu’er. But the taste, the taste is all strawberry! chocolate covered strawberries! in a heavy, earthy base. Pu’er tea never really tastes as bad as it smells (in my opinion, obviously). In fact, this tastes quite good. I like the strawberry and chocolate, and I like the way the flavor lingers in your mouth after you take a sip. The strawberry isn’t the candied sweet variety, it’s a slightly tart real strawberry flavor, which I really like. That in itself might having me reaching for this tea more often.

Thanks go to Crystal for this sample! ETA: The undertones come out a lot more on the second and third steeping, changing the flavor quite a bit. It’s less fruity, more earthy.

Don’t recall what I wrote last time, but the grapefruit flavour really is fairly accurate in this one. Quite identifiably grapefruit, not miscellaneous citrus or anything else. I still maintain that Butiki’s is better, but to be fair, there’s also a much better base tea with her version, and I think that really complements the grapefruit flavour, whereas this tea has a basic sencha, and I don’t think seaweedy notes work so well. Regardless, I had a couple yummy travel mugs of this (one resteep).

Ah – read my old note – I originally tried a sample from someone else, whereas this time, it was from my half of a 50g packet from a Jan 2013 Happy Bag. So, much more flavour, in spite of the terrible storage (I hate Lupicia’s non-resealable packaging. At least make it have a metal twist-tie closure or something!! Not airtight but better than lying open!)

Thanks to LiberTeas for a sample of this one, that apparently has been sitting in my box for quite a while!

I think this tea may be suffering a bit from old age; I can both smell and taste some delicious real grapefruit flavour, with a brothy green base, but the flavour isn’t terribly strong. It may also be that my expectation was for something more along the lines of Butiki’s Grapefruit Dragon, which literally tasted like unsweetened grapefruit juice.

Either way, this isn’t bad; I’d try using more than 1.5 tsp leaf next time to see if I can amp up the flavour a bit. There wasn’t any astringency, so I think I’d be ok with an extra half teaspoon.

I’m pretty sure some of this is soon en route to me as part of Lupicia’s Happy Bag sale… (so I’m hoping I can figure out how to improve its flavour a bit!)

Many cherry blossoms away from tasting this last, actually it’s been nine years. I would be assuaged by the word nostalgic here, because it’s a tea mostly suited for the in cup steep, and then again it’s the first one I had had in soo long since going to the UK and having my first taste of black tea from the proper vendor. I’m usually a green tea drinker but so long as you don’t oversteep this one it’s great iced or after a casual clothes optional yoga session with someone you’ve hardly known more than two weeks, so yeah I recommend this.

This smells amazing. Sweet and fruity, though if you didn’t mention it was supposed to be peach I probably wouldn’t have known. I think I’ll simply sniff the teabags the next time I need a pick-me-up.

In the cup this tea is very light and not as sweet as it smells (probably a good thing). The scent is still there, and it does remind me of the peach gummies someone else mentioned. The tea itself tastes slightly sweet, but other than that it doesn’t taste like much of anything at all, except for a slight bitterness at the end (and I swear I didn’t oversteep it!). Most of the “taste” comes from the scent of the tea. All in all a good one for spring.

Thanks go to Toi Toi for sending me a sample to try!

I actually drink this tea a lot because I drink it as a cold brew. I don’t log it, but I do enjoy it. I’ve hit the sweet spot when it comes to preparation: 3tsp, 12oz of water, 8 hr steep. Fresh and fruity, citrusy and lovely without being overpowering or grassy. I did have it today with lunch, which worked out perfectly. I admit I’ll be sad when I run out of this one for my cold brews.

Finally got around to cold brewing this one to have with lunch, and boy was it delicious! Lots of juicy grapefruit, no bitterness or astringency from the green tea. Super happy to have this one to drink with lunches since I have made a sizeable dent in my supply of teas to cold brew.

I can never tell how a green tea will come out when cold steeped… maybe it has more to do with the quality of the base leaf, unlike black tea where a poor base can be masked by a cold steep. Sometimes greens are bitter and overdone, but not this one. Yum!

Look at me go, drinking more fruity green teas. And really enjoying this one too! This is one of the teas I received in my happy bag from Lupicia, and it certainly makes me happy. This morning I opened this tea to put it in a recently-empty tin, and I was hit by the intense smell of juicy grapefruit. I knew I would be making it as my second cup of tea!

Steeped it came out very nicely. The grapefruit is relatively light and not overpowering, but it is definitely present. Grapefruit of course can be pretty bitter on its own, but I am thankful that there was no bitterness in this one. Just light, slightly sweet, citrusy goodness. The green tea was pretty standard, but it worked. I guess I do still enjoy fruity greens in the right circumstances!

So far, I am really loving this company’s flavoring techniques. I opened the bag, stuck my nose in, and WHAM! was hit in the face with grapefruit-y goodness. The base tea seems to be some sort of Dragonwell-like grade of tea, and smells very grassy, like matcha. In fact, when it steeped, it had some minimal green froth at the top, which also made me think matcha, because that’s the only green tea I know of that does that. The label doesn’t say there’s any in there, but I am wondering…

Anyway, the grassy green tea scent took over when I steeped it, which was to be expected. Generally speaking, green tea tends to take over any flavoring it’s blended with, unless it’s a particularly potent flavoring (which you would think grapefruit would be, but somehow, it didn’t surprise me). I could detect a TEENSY bit of the grapefruit in the smell, but only if I stuck my nose right up on it and hunted for it.

Anyway, it also didn’t surprise me that I had to sweeten this one to make the grapefruit flavor shine. That’s okay with me—when I eat grapefruit, I sweeten the mess out of it. This was a thoroughly enjoying cup, from beginning to end. The cooler it got, the more the grapefruit came out. The hubby came in the room and wanted some, so I made myself a second cup with him, and I sweetened it even more. I didn’t like it as much with MORE sugar, believe it or not (we really like our tea sweet)—it threw the balance off. I’m very impressed, and I will drink this one with enthusiasm!

Yet another Lupicia oolong sample thanks to Alphakitty!

This one smelled delicious but didn’t pan out in the taste so much. There was just something missing… I wanted more sweetness, more buttery floral notes from the oolong. The light tangerine was nice at the beginning of the sip but otherwise it was barely present. I’m not sure if this one suffered from storage in a plastic bag or what, but it wasn’t quite as good as some of the others from Lupicia that I’ve tried.

Butterscotch: if you like it, you’ll enjoy this tea. Smells like it and tastes like it… well, like toasted butterscotch, and not quite as sweet. There’s quite a bit of flavor here, no focused attention is necessary. Also Crystal, who surprised me with this delicious gift, noted a nutty flavor as well, good call on that subtlety; I’d peg it as hazelnut.

The creamy mouthfeel continues into a lengthy aftertaste, which is quite nice… like breathing butterscotch-caramel.

I’d recommend this tea for folks like me who don’t seek out “sweet” teas but enjoy a little sweetness now and then as long as it’s not all high notes.

This would be good to use as a flavoring for more plain teas, like that nondescript black that you want to use up. So … on the 3rd steep I added some Irish Breakfast that I actually like, and the results are great. Delicious, it cut some of the sweetness and added more interest to the black tea. This would be a great satisfying Saturday breakfast tea, now, like tea with a little sweet roll on the side, without the calories. When added to another tea like this, I’d give this a 90 rating. The strength of the flavor holds up remarkably well.

2021 Sipdown 7/365!

Decided to use up the last of one bag of this and try it with milk (ok, I used 5% cream as that’s what I have on hand; we need to go grocery shopping). Unfortunately, I think I put too much cream in for the current strength of the tea (which is pretty weak). I can smell that tantalizing cookie aroma but can’t really taste it so much. Still good though, but not quite what I was aiming for. I have at least another ~50g of this somewhere, and possibly more, so perhaps I will try again.

Mmm. A solid few infusions of this the other day (yesterday? I don’t remember.) Malty and delicious. I did make the mistake of putting cream and maple syrup in my first cup – the cream was too much. I think a bit of milk would have been a better choice. It was fine to drink, but lost that special “Cookie” flavour which is the whole reason I own this tea.

Such a yummy flavoured black. Shared with a friend and she appreciated it as well!

Mmmmm, still a big fan of this one. I picked this up a year ago in Hawaii; no regrets. It’s just so decadent. Best steeped carefully – the ctc leaves mean that only a tsp is needed per cup, and it requires a light hand on the infusion time, otherwise it gets too strong and needs milk. Brewed correctly, it’s quite enjoyable straight!

Picked a bunch of this up in Hawaii on my honeymoon – but I didn’t seal the bag very well :( Lost a bit of flavour, which is sad – I wish Lupicia used closeable bags. Still good, but should have been better considering it’s still pretty fresh.

Not as tasty today, but maybe I underleafed. Still could taste Cookie goodness, but not as strong as I usually like.

Thank you so much to VariaTEA for gifting me the rest of her packet of Cookie, because I looooove this tea, and it’s so deliciously rich and perfect for winter. I still don’t get “cookie” but it’s rich and malty and bakey and yum. 3 infusions overall.