Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Herbal
Where to Buy: Lupicia USA
Tea Description:
Aromatic six-rowed barley produced in Japan flavored with fresh watermelon. Limited flavor just for summer.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
Tis the season of iced tea and delicious summer fruit! Nothing says ‘summer’ to me quite like mugicha (which is roasted barley tea, traditionally sipped on iced as cold as my heart.) and fresh, sweet, and messy watermelon. Lupicia’s Watermelon Barley tea sounded almost too good to be true on their website, I just had to bite. I’m hoping that the hype I have built up in my brain lives up to this fantasy blend.
The combination of roasted and toasted barley with fresh and juicy watermelon sounds like it could be either really great, or really awful. The only way is to drink this tea and find out!
Upon opening the bag, the sachets inside are large and offer a tiny hint of what I am about to brew. The main scent on first whiff was the roasted grain smell, rich and full. Cloyingly sweet in the background is the fruity watermelon. I didn’t let myself investigate further, I was dying to sink my teeth into the brew. I attempted the cold brew in 2 cups of cold water for 4 hours, simply out of laziness. This resulted in the toasty flavor of the barley becoming a little too overpowering for the watermelon to handle. I could only taste a whisper, it might as well have been regular old mugicha.
The next day I wanted to make it right. I knew it was just a user error on my end, and I needed this tea to taste differently than it had when I brewed it cold. So, I used one pyramid type bag in 16oz. of freshly boiled water. Steeped for 5 minutes then chilled in the refrigerator. When I brought it out the next morning and huffed the liquid, I was met with a satisfyingly sweet smell. The watermelon! Drinking it throughout the day was greatly refreshing. The watermelon was so very melon-y, juicy, thirst quenching. It leans on the side of becoming candy-like in flavor, but stays true to the actual fruit. The barley is still the forefront, but not obnoxiously so. The brew as a whole tastes like grilled watermelon, in a good way. (which is a great thing to try for your next barbeque, by the way!) Probably my new favorite go to easy iced tea for the summer!
Mimosa Black Tea from Lupicia
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Lupicia USA
Tea Description:
A black tea is scented and inspired by mimosa flowers that denote the arrival of spring. Floral and refreshing citrus aroma.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
They say that America runs on Dunkin’, but I think that old saying needs to be updated. I manage a small breakfast-oriented restaurant and if I am not mistaken, the humble mimosa reigns supreme. Nothing like a slab of bacon, a couple waffles and a mimosa to cure a hangover. We oftentimes sell more mimosas on the weekend than coffee.
Even though, I still love the smell of orange juice and cheap champagne. It smells like breakfast to me. I don’t care for alcoholic beverages in any way, but I like the flavor profiles. The idea is much more romantic than actual execution and resulting effects it may have. When I stumbled upon the funky gold tin on Lupicia’s website, I was completely sold. tea. Now if only I could get it in bulk to sell it in my restaurant… the possibilities!
The tea leaves give off an aroma that is so eerily exact to the combination of fresh squeezed orange juice and champagne that it’s a bit confusing at first. I wouldn’t have thought that a black tea would have been the best choice for a such light and effervescent drink. But when I steeped this tea in a small teapot, it turned into a surprisingly delightful drink. Comforting, bright, it’s got that great orange zest flavor and a slightly boozy tang of the champagne. I have tried this tea both hot and cold, and while the hot version is quite nice, i like my citrus-flavored black teas iced much better.
Sometimes certain special and limited edition teas on the Lupicia website are rather hard to find. You really have to dig if you want to find any interesting or different blends than what you’d see at first glance. There is a treasure trove of cool teas and beautiful tins just waiting to be taken home and loved forever. This is a great find, and I can soundly recommend it for those of you who enjoy a great citrus flavored black tea.
Banane Chocolat Flavored Black Tea from Lupicia
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Lupicia Tea
Tea Description:
Banana and chocolate flavored black tea with bright yellow petals.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
The aroma of this tea is delicious! I can smell the banana and the chocolate and it’s making my mouth water! Mmm!
And this is certainly tasty! The chocolate notes are a dark chocolate note, reminding me a bit of dark, unsweetened cocoa powder that you’d use to make brownies. Not bitter like that, but the chocolate flavor reminds me of that deep, rich cocoa flavor.
But the banana is the real star of this show. The banana comes through strong with a really good banana flavor. It tastes very true to the fruit. It’s sweet and I can almost feel the creamy texture of the banana in this.
One of the better banana teas that I’ve yet to try.
The black tea is more of a background flavor here – and if I were to offer any complaint about the tea, that would be it. I think that a slightly stronger black tea base might be nice. Maybe a malty Assam (I would love to see how that malty flavor tastes with the banana notes!)
I found that this tea is best served hot. When it’s still fresh from the teapot hot, I found that the flavors were less distinct. The banana was strong but I didn’t get a strong chocolate-y presence. So let it cool a few minutes, and then taste it again. The chocolate notes start to come forward, and the banana is really well defined.
This one might just end up being my favorite from Lupicia! Or, at the very least, this belongs in my top five of favorites from Lupicia.
Cache-Cache Black Tea from Lupicia
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Lupicia Tea
Tea Description:
“CACHE-CACHE” means “hide-and-seek” in French. This is a tea where various flavors are hidden and found.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
This is a most unusual tea, this Cache-Cache Black Tea from Lupicia! I’ve tried it a few times, and it’s a tea that every time I taste it, I taste something a little different, so it certainly does present a challenge when it comes to writing a review for it.
The best way I can think of to describe what I’m tasting is to say that it is a tasty black tea with some very unique profiles within its layers of flavor. The black tea base is pleasant and smooth. It’s a medium-to-full bodied tea that seems to “fill in the gaps” in the background to provide a delicious black tea “canvas” for the unique flavors “hiding” within this tea to present themselves.
Fruity is the first word that comes to mind after I take a sip of this tea. What fruit? That’s where the challenge comes in. I taste notes that are similar to mango and melon. It’s a bit like a melange of fruit flavors that have all been blended into one cup – sort of like a fruit smoothie. There’s a sort of creamy type of flavor to this as well, but not so much a creamy “vanilla” type of flavor or even a creamy “milky” or “buttery” flavor, instead, it’s more like the creaminess you would taste from that banana in the aforementioned smoothie.
Previous tastings of this tea offered notes of spice. Gentle notes of spice, mind you, not something strong like you’d probably experience from a chai blend where the spices dominate the cup, but, more like a subtle hint of pepper with and a soft warmth like you might experience from cardamom or clove.
This is really an enjoyable tea – and I like that it offers you a different experience every time you taste it. I don’t know that this would necessarily be the tea for purists, but, for someone who is really looking for a tea time adventure, this would be a fun tea to try.
Momijigari Black Tea Blend from Lupicia Tea
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Lupicia Tea
Tea Description:
Vibrant autumn leaves are blended into black tea. A sophisticated flavor of apple and apricot is limited to the autumn. Limited Quantity & Period Only
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
As I sit here, smelling the wonderful aroma that wafts from my teacup, I am reminded of autumn. This Momijigari Black Tea Blend from Lupicia Tea smells … like autumn! Like the smell of the air and the leaves and the apples. There is a distinct wine-like character to the fragrance as well, with the faintest hints of smoke.
This is one of the more unique flavored teas that I’ve tasted … and it truly tastes like autumn to me. It has notes of apple and apricot in the flavor – two fruits I think of when I think of harvest. I like that while these are distinct flavor profiles here, they do not overpower the cup.
I’m also tasting a wine-like flavor – it is rustic and warm – like mulled wine without the spices. I taste the faintest hints of smoke … reminiscent of the air that I would experience in the autumn as the air begins to cool and smoke is wafting from the chimneys.
And the black tea is not absent here either. There is a warm, earthy tone to the background … not an aggressive or strong black tea flavor … but just enough to support the other flavors.
This is a very enjoyable cuppa from Lupicia Tea!