Napa Blanc

Cooking TTB #2

This isn’t tea…it’s white wine! Such a lovely, natural grape flavor with a bit of sweetness and just a touch of jasmine. I’m loving this hot, but I’m guessing it would be even better iced. Add this to the list of Lupicia teas I’ll be ordering whenever I can manage to justify buying more tea!

Oh this is wonderful. I keep thinking that I’m losing interest in flavoured teas and then one like this comes along.

I’m no usually into grape flavoured stuff, but this is such a light, natural tasting grape, and it compliments the delicate vegetal tea so beautifully. There’s just a hint of jasmine, which is nice and subtle. Delicious.

Grape candy. The kind you get in Japan, those “champagne grape” jellies.

Yep.

Definitely.

It’s nice, I LOVE that you steep it for a short time at boiling, and it does taste good, but I don’t think I loooooove the tea. I’ll have to wait till I finish the mug. It’s a touch bitter, so I’d steep it again for 1:30 instead of 1:45.

This sample came from mj, thanks dear! I’ve had a few more swaps since hers so her teas are starting to get buried under a pile of other flavored teas. :P This one is small, dark sencha leaves with a couple of white flower buds and a single piece of white spiky rock candy. Dry scent is sweet grape with a light floral edge. I steeped a level teaspoon for 2 minutes at 175 degrees.

Once brewed, the tea smells like white grape juice and rock candy! Yum, I’m really loving this one. It’s a nice combination of sweet white grape with subtle jasmine and mild vegetal sencha. Now, I’m not the biggest proponent of jasmine, but it’s used with a deft hand here and doesn’t overpower the other flavors. The grape is authentic and delicous and doesn’t taste candylike at all, and the sencha is quite mild and sweet. There’s some here that tastes a bit spice-like to me, a warming spice like clove or cinnamon? But it’s just the tiniest hint. Overall, yum!

May have over steeped my first cup a bit. It’s sweet with a bitter kick. But not too bitter to drink. It’s quite sweet. Not really sure that it needs the sugar. Maybe I’ll take out the sugar and try it again later in the day. I love a good sweet white wine but I don’t know that I can really taste…hmm well maybe… I had a taste of wine grapes there for a moment.

I cold brewed this one and added a bit of sweetener, and the flavour I got was epic: like maynard’s wine gums candies with a hint of jasmine. It sounds like an odd combination, but I absolutely loved it and found it quite refreshing. The slight astringency also added to it, giving me the same mouth sensation as dry white wine.

I’m really not sure how to feel about this tea at the moment. It reminds me a lot of Lupicia’s muscat tea, but with a little more tang. Dry it smelled faintly like bubblegum, but once brewed I’m getting muscat and jasmine. I may have over leafed this because it tastes really strong. It is also reminding me a bit of Stassen’s jasmine tea with the super potent jasmine pucker. I really enjoy that tea cold, so I’ll have to try this one cold some day as well. The aftertaste of this tea is really strong and lingers for a while with a bit of that tang hanging on as well which is kinda nice. Verdict is still out on this one.

From the name, I’m assuming it’s supposed to have notes of white wine. I honestly don’t know how wine is supposed to taste like since I’ve never had alcohol before! Yep. People are very surprised to hear that I don’t drink and I’m like.. I’m not old enough?? So yeah. That’s a thing that happens all the time.
I have cooked with alcohol before. White wine in our risotto, red in our coq au vin, beer in our bbq shrimp, and oh our tequila lime chicken was quite possibly the BEST thing I’ve ever tasted! But never alcohol on it’s own.

This one smells nice! It smells familiar in a way with the muscat since I always had muscat gummies when I was younger. This tea looks and smells great! I love the addition of the jasmine flowers and the cute little sugar nodes :)
Taste-wise, it’s really good! Oh wow, I really like this one. I think I like muscat flavours over grape. Muscat is sweeter, which I love :) But yeah, I’ve definitely had like 2 muscat teas and 1 grape tea in my life so I can’t really compare them.

I’ve had this tea for a while and only now did I decide to drink it? Dang. Well this is an absolutely wonderful tea. Definitely an ‘everyday’ sort of tea… if only that can be a thing! I have so much tea I need to rotate it all. But at least I know this one is great :)

And I sorta feel like Lupicia is starting to boom here on steepster :) I used to never see them on my dash, but now they’re there all the time, which makes me uber happy :)

I got this as a sample from the Santa Clara location last month. It smells like these muscat gummies I really like. The flavour is sweet, and floral. Too much jasmine though.
Still glad I got to try this one.

Funny, I usually avoid white wine and savor my reds as I find whites give me a headache. So it was only after I drank this that I read the ingredient list and discovered the reasoning behind the name (duh me!) and that there was jasmine in it. I’d say the grapes and the jasmine blend together beautifully, although this is pre-sweetened, and thus, much sweeter than I expected. I doubt I’ll seek it out again, however it was a tasty tea, and a must-try for white wine lovers.

Thanks jump62359 for sharing this so generously with me!