Hello Steepsterites! Yes, it has been a while since I’ve been on. Honestly, Steepster loads so slowly for me that it just takes too long for me to get on here and play, so I haven’t been. But I figured I needed to bite the bullet and do some clean up to my cupboard as well as check in with folks so I’m doing that today. Hopefully slow load times won’t tick me off too much and I’ll even be able to get some backlogs in.
But enough hoping about backlogs – I’m here to log a tea that’s actually in my cup right now! This one was a teabag included in with my Lupicia Happy Bag that I bought. I can’t help it – I love their surprise grab bags! I certainly don’t need more tea, much less surprise tea, but I still buy it anyway. I’m trying to be good though, and not break open too many of the new packages of tea before I do away with some older teas. So this one, being a single teabag, is a nice burst of new that doubles as a decupboard. So win all around!
First off, the smell. Holy mother of goodness does this teabag smell apple-y. It’s like a just bit into a fresh, crispy, juicy Gala or Pinata apple. I can almost feel the crunch in my teeth! As I kept smelling the teabag wrapper while my tea was brewing (everyone does this, right?) a little note of apple-flavored hard candy started to come out on the edges of the smell which took away a bit of the I-am-eating-a-fresh-apple feeling, but it still smells delicious. Post-brewing, the actual liquid tea smells almost bake-y but not quite. Maybe like an unsweetened version of a chocolate graham cracker topped with a large dollop of tart green apple preserves. I say tart mostly because it doesn’t smell super sugared and cinnamon-y like most apple flavored things seem to. I will admit, while unusual, it is nice to have something apple that isn’t apple cinnamon.
The taste is mild compared to the smell, but that’s pretty typical with Lupicia. I taste a tea base but I can’t really identify it – Ceylon probably. The apple taste is a bit more green apple than anything but I think that has to do mostly with the end note. The initial taste of the sip seems to be fairly evenly split between tea and sweet red apple. It’s very mild but summer-time pleasant. Then the swallow which edges a bit towards the tea side – making me think a bit of a Nilgiri but without the feeling that I’m eating rose bush leaves (the texture/flavor I always seem to associate with Nilgiri teas) – with only a hint of apple sweetness. Then post-swallow, the green apple flavor expands to fill my mouth, making me feel a bit like I just took a lick of an apple Jolly Rancher, but without the sticky, icky aftertaste a lot of candies can leave. It’s not a tart green apple flavor though. There’s no sourness or pucker to it. It’s just not as sweet as the red apple portion of the program.
As almost always seems to be the case with Lupicia, the flavor is very true to the name. This is an apple tea. Quite honestly, it’s a really good apple tea. I can’t say for sure if I’d ever buy this – I rarely find myself craving apple flavored things unless they are an actual apple and even that doesn’t happen too often – but the flavor is so tasty and makes me feel like I’m walking through an apple orchard so I really can’t dislike this tea. I’d say anyone that tends to crave apple things (or just wants to experience the novelty of something apple-flavored without also being cinnamon-flavored or sour/tart) would greatly enjoy having this tea around. Honestly, I wish I had more than one bag so I could see if this made me start craving apple things. I think it might. Because now my cup is empty and I think I want more.
