Piccolo

Not the biggest rooibos fan, but this came as a free sample with my Lupicia magazine, so I thought I would pop it in tonight while watching the Lance Armstrong interview on Oprah.

This isn’t bad, and has a nice natural sweetness without needing any sugar. It’s not the best, but the rooibos flavor isn’t super prominent which makes it a little more bearable.

I got a sample of this with my happy bag, and I’ve been eying it with caution ever since. Rooibos and I do not get along, it’s so medicinal and I’m starting to think it might be a migraine trigger for me under certain circumstances. But I decided to brave it, because it’s just a one bag sample AND it reminds me of Dragon Ball Z (which my brother loves, so I’ve spent a lot of time watching it with him haha).

The berry flavor here is nice, kind of jammy mixed berry without one dominant flavor. It’s sweet, kind of honey like and rather thick—like it has honey in it, but with no actual honey. However, the medicinal aspects of the rooibos are just not working for me unfortunately. It’s kind of overpowering, I finished the cup but definitely didn’t love this one.

Tasty! I’m quite enjoying this. I think the flavors are strong enough that I don’t notice the rooibos too much. I’m noticing that most of the not so good reviews for this are because people just don’t like rooibos at all. If you do like rooibos and berries though, you’d love this tea. Even I, neutral to meh about rooibos, enjoy this tea.

This is the bagged variety that arrived in a sample form with my order. So just poured boiling water over it and let it steep while I ate my dinner. No oversteeping issues here. None of the sour woodsy flavor I dislike. The berry flavor here is like berry syrup. I think I’m detecting blueberry and strawberry in here. Blueberry strawberry syrup. Mmmm…makes me long for summer.

A sachet of this came with my Lupicia grab bag, although technically it came with the “newsletter” that was included, and I did get a 50g bag of it as well. I figure I would try the sachet first that way if I didn’t like it I wouldn’t open the bag and I could trade it unopened. I’m not the biggest fan of rooibos, see.

Unfortunately, to me this smells like berry but also like menthol. It smells like a cough drop, hardcore. Taste-wise, it’s a bit better, but still… Wait, no, it tastes like sucking on a cough drop. Bleh. I think it’s the honey flavor that’s coming across weird to me. Sometimes I take a sip and it’s not so bad, others it’s quite rough. Well, it does appear that others enjoy this one, so maybe I will be able to trade it away.

Tea of the eveing…….

And tea #2 from my $30 Lupicia Fukubukuro bag. (There are five loose teas, two bags of 10 teabags, one bag of extra long tea clips, a good sized tea ball, and a small but nice canvas bag.) This one came as a loose tea. One thing I am really liking about Lupicia is the amounts they sell. I love teas in 50g amounts. It is just enough to try and be sure about a repurchase…..and the repurchase is still small so that you don’t feel badly if your tastes wander to a different type of tea. I think one of my big mistakes in my tea journey has been stocking up on something I might not like so much in 6 months….. Also, since I have quite a bit of tea on the premises, it makes sense to buy small amounts for freshness optimization before using it up.

While rooibos is not my favorite kind of tea, this one is pretty good. I do require this one to be sweetened. It brings out the berry and honey flavors even more…..kind of like Tower of London in rooibos form.

Mug method for 5 minutes.

A package of 5 teabags of this came with my lucky bag. I really, really like this. It’s sweet, and the honey flavor definitely comes through. I don’t get so much of the berry flavors, but the honey does a good job of moderating the rooibos, and making it into something delicious. I’m thinking about adding this to my shopping list after I use up the teabags I have.

Oh, dear. I opened my sample bag to make a pot of this for the hubby and me, and was smacked in the nose by the smell of MEDICINE. I think it may be the rooibos and the honey together producing that smell, but I almost couldn’t get past it, it was so strong. The berries just weren’t helping enough to mask the intense medicinal scent. We let it steep for about 4 minutes, I suppose, while I stayed far away…

I gotta be honest. It may be the pregnancy doing this to me (third trimester, yay!), so while I can only relate what I smelled, it’s up to you, dear reader, how seriously you take my opinions on smell. I have noticed certain things smelling a little off from what they smelled like before, but not everything.

Anyway, more recently I have found myself liking rooiboses less and less, and so I can’t say I was looking forward to this one, but I had wanted to try it so badly, I figured I’d better go through with it now that I have it.

So, with all that said, on to the tea itself. After it cooled enough to drink, the medicinal smell had dumbed down quite a bit, which was a relief. I still couldn’t quite smell the berries. My first sip wasn’t that impressive, but after a few sips I was finding that the honey did actually cover some of the rooibos flavors that I’d been shying away from lately. Rooibos just tastes too sharply metallic for me to really get into it anymore, and I can’t tell if it’s my tastes actually changing, or if this is just a pregnancy thing. Anyway, it’s definitely a well-blended tea- the more it cools, the more hints of strawberry and blueberry I get. I’m wondering how this would do iced.

I added a little milk halfway through the cup, but the tea had cooled so much that this hardly made a difference. Might try that earlier on next time and see what happens. Anyway, in overview, I’m not saying it’s my favorite, but I can definitely tell it’s a well-balanced tea that ended up being rather enjoyable.

As a side note, the hubby suggested that perhaps I should try to get more green rooiboses, since they don’t seem to offend me (I ADORE Teavana’s Rooibos Peach Bloom). I think an experiment is in order… Anybody got any good ones to suggest?

This smells awesome – very strong berry aroma with faint notes of honey. It has a very sweet smell, almost like a berry candy. As it brews, it smells a bit like wine.

When it is hot, I can taste berry, faint notes of honey and very faint nutty flavor from the rooibos. As it begins to cool, the honey flavor intensifies and more of that woody taste from the rooibos comes out. I can also taste a bit of apple in the background.

Overall, a decent tasting rooibos. Not my favorite blend, but certainly not the worst I’ve ever tried either. Nice.

I don’t think I like rooibos tea, at least not the red kind.

It reminds me of cough medicine I took as a child. But that could be the apricot. Hmm, no way to tell until I try another rooibos variety.

The tea has a slightly cool, refreshing aftertaste. It’s definitely weird. But I just can’t get over that medicine taste. I hate to do this, but this one’s going down the drain. :(

This is a nice tea. I have been sick for the past few days now, so my sense of smell is bad. But this is nice and fruity. Soothing and not bitter and not tart

This is pretty good for what it is. I’m not the biggest fan of red rooibos – I don’t like it plain at all, although I do sometimes enjoy it in blends. The rooibos here is present, but not to the point of being off-putting (to me, at least). The fruit flavoring is rather sweet and quite strong, if a bit on the artificial side – I say fruit, rather than berry and/or apricot, because, as with several other Lupicia blends I’ve tried, it’s more of a generic fruit candy flavor than anything else. I’m especially reminded of Neptune here, which struck me as, essentially, Piccolo with a black base rather than a rooibos one. It’s a bit sweeter than I’d like.

I’m enjoying this one in the evenings. It’s not outstanding, but then there aren’t a ton of caffeine-free blends that I really love drinking. I’m giving this a slightly higher score than I’d give a comparable caffeinated tea (see Neptune) just for adding some variety to my nighttime repertoire.

Piccolo is marketed as a children’s tea by Lupicia because it’s caffeine-free. I do think children will like it because it is bursting with berry flavours! The rooibos base is very sweet with a hint of nuts, and most importantly it has no weird straw-y flavour. This overall tastes more like fruit juice (with artificial flavouring, which the kids love :P) than tea.

I’m discovering I’m not a roobios fan I think. Fortunately this was a sample with my order. Didn’t like and couldn’t finish.

I love this fruity rooibos. Lupicia rooibos teas are so much smoother than other rooibos teas I’ve had and don’t leave a weird aftertaste. This one is perfect for an afternoon or evening respite.

This is a mild tea, not bad but did not catch my attention either. The aroma of fruit and honey is very nice.

I usually steeped it for a few minutes but I decided to steep it for about 20 minutes with my last bag. It did bring out more flavor but was still could not bring forth enough in my opinion. I do tend to like flavorful teas so I am sure many will like it since it is mild and smooth but still has a slight fruit and honey taste.

50g package came in my Lucky Bag. I like rooibos and drinking tea at night, so I was happy to see it.

I can understand why some might be put off by the smell – it’s slightly medicinal and artificially berry. Brewed, the rooibos does come through, so this is not a tea for those who dislike it. If you use about 1.5 teaspoons and steep for at least 4 minutes, the berry and honey flavor develops a bit more and is pleasantly sweet.

I don’t think I’d rush to buy this again, but it did the trick.

I agree with the notion of cough syrup, much like Pediacare or Robitussin, thought the taste wasn’t quite the same, a little less strong. I had this hot, and I think it got better as it cooled little bit. I’m using this in tea bag form.

I am not a huge fan of red rooibos, yet, this is one of the better teas. Sweet smell but the mixture of honey and rooibos is creating some odd flavours. I once tried some honey red rooibos tea from South Africa and this far surpasses it because it doesn’t have that cardboard rooibos after taste.