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!
Yuzu Temple Green Tea by Mariage Freres
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: Mariage Freres
Tea Description:
This surprising blend, with its evocative name, is based on a fine green tea. It boasts the pleasantly round acidity of citrus fruit, the aromatic richness and peppery notes of mild spices, plus the rind of real Japanese Yuzu (halfway between lemon and mandarin orange). Resolutely exotic.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
This is one of the Mariage Freres teas that I always seem to overlook when I’m choosing a green tea to drink. There’s no reason for it; it just seems to happen. From time to time, I’ll make an effort to pull out those languishing teas and give them another try. I’m usually surprised by what I discover!
I used 1 tsp of leaf for this cup, and gave it 2.5 minutes in water cooled to around 180 degrees. The dry leaf is very dark green and folded in appearance – it looks to me like a dragonwell, but there’s no specific indication on the packaging. Some leaves are quite small and fine (almost shredded in appearance), so I suspect it may be a blend of some kind. The scent is mildly grassy and a little bitter. Once brewed, the resulting liquor is a medium yellow, the scent mildly floral.
To taste, this one belies its appearance. I had it pegged as heavy-tasting and possibly bitter, but it’s not like that at all. It’s actually a light, refreshing, spring-like green tea, with initial notes of grass and hay, and a light orchid-like floral in the mid-sip. There’s also a slightly bitter fruitiness that reminds me of orange pith, or perhaps the physalis that sometimes accompany desserts. It’s a pleasant counterpoint to the sweet, mild green base.
The flavours are a little fleeting, and don’t really linger long in the aftertaste, so it’s an excellent palate cleanser. I can see this tea really coming into its own during the warm days of spring and summer ahead. It’s refreshing, sweet and flavourful without being cloying, and wonderfully light on the palate. Although today’s cup is hot, I’m sure I’ll be drinking a lot more of this iced or cold brewed in the coming weeks. Definitely not to be neglected.
Flower of Hawaii Black from Tea Gschwendner
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Tea Gschwendner
Tea Description:
Mouth-watering pineapple and succulent apricot bloom into a sweet reminder of the Islands. Mahalo.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
So this was a blind tasting; meaning I didn’t look up anything about this tea prior to trying it. However, I definitely had major expectations for pineapple – even though I didn’t see anything but somewhat non-descript candied fruit pieces in the dry leaf whenever you hear “Hawaii” in a teas name pineapple is pretty well always the ‘go to’ assumption, am I right? Also, this was a cold brew because it definitely smelled very fruity and tropical and those are definitely the kind of flavours that lend themselves well to drinking cold.
Pineapple actually is the first flavour I taste; a very tropical, sweet pineapple without a lot of natural tang to it. I’m a pineapple fiend, so of course I’m craving much more pineapple flavor though the level it’s at is pretty good given it’s the more dominant flavor. It’s accompanied by a secondary fruit flavour but I’m struggling to identify it. It’s definitely not as distinct as the pineapple is. Mango maybe? The flavor of the base is about even to the flavour of the fruit. Overall this is a relatively juicy and very summery, but other wise not overly complex or nuanced. I think I’d appreciate a few more ingredients to add some more layers to the flavour. Dare I say it, coconut would probably go well or something floral like rose.
Also, since finishing I’ve looked up the ingredients and the secondary fruit flavor was apricot – looking back in hindsight I really don’t think that it tasted anything like apricot and I’m definitely sticking with my impression that the fruit notes were much more similar to a, perhaps over ripe, mango.
Apart from not being terribly spot on with the apricot flavouring, this is a pretty solid blend!
Citron Potion Oolong Tea from Tealyra
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Oolong
Where to Buy: Tealyra
Tea Description:
One of our most popular flavored teas, Citron Potion is a special blend of supreme jasmine scented oolong that has been cured with rare jasmine blossoms, a unique blend of herbs and a combination of refreshing citrus fruits. This organic oolong tea will quickly become a favorite with the pick me up natural orange oil, hint of organic lemon myrtle and the unmistakable rare flavor and aroma of the jasmine flower.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
I was a little worried about the tea leaf to ‘other stuff ratio when I opened the package of Citron Potion Oolong from Tealyra. I saw nary a leaf compared to the intense amount of jasmine flowers. The package smelled amazing though, and I made to pick out enough loosely rolled oolong leaves as possible. The style of oolong looked to be a baozhong. Those are among my favorite types of oolong, so I was hopeful about this brew.
Wanting to allow the leaves to do some crazy expansion, I loading 5g of tea into my gravity steeper, and doused it with 190 degree water. To my surprise, I watched the seemingly small amount of tea leaf expand to fill over half of the gravity steeper. The leaves were large and entirely uncut. Huh. Happy to see the expansion of the leaf, I got excited to try the brew. Phew!
The steeped leaf is quite fleshing and light. Tasting the tea, I can easily recognize the bouquet of floral notes that the oolong lays out for me. Roses, peony, and lilies. They are complimented by the sweetness of the orange oil, which probably takes the cake for the topmost note in this tea. I am having a had time finding the jasmine flower essence in this tea. Perhaps the flowers are just a carrier for the orange flavoring. Either way, I am pretty happy with how this tea came out.
I tried this tea two ways, brewed hot, and cold brewed in a large jug. Both methods produce a silky mouthfeel and really great and strong oolong-y flavors and citrus. This is going to be a great summer tea to get me through the dog days of summer! That is, if it ever gets warm again, it’s been so cold and rainy in the Mile High City lately! I’m wearing gloves to type this review, my fingers are freezing. This tea makes me wistful for summer, one day it will come, right? Right??
Lychee Konnyaku from Ette Tea
Tea Information:
Leaf Type: Black/Green
Where to Buy: Ette Tea
Tea Description:
Our newest tea formula of Jasmine green, black tea, cranberries, lychee pieces & lily blossoms. Sweet tasting & tangy as the Japanese jelly dessert, Lychee Konnyaku tea provides the added malty texture and body for the gourmet tea lover.
Learn more about this tea here.
Taster’s Review:
This, along with the Mango Sticky Rice blend that I’ve yet to try, is the Ette Tea blend I’m most excited about tasting and reviewing. I absolutely adore lychee in just about anything, but especially in tea. Plus, cranberry is also one of my favourite fruit flavours in tea so the pairing of the two got me really, really excited. It’s also a pairing that I haven’t seen done before which was really cool too.
Dry; this has some really robust smelling lychee. It’s also fairly floral which should be expected given that there’s jasmine from the green tea and also the addition of lily, but lychee is a very floral tasting fruit too so it comes from that as well. I don’t see as many cranberries in the leaf as I want their to be, though I did make sure that what I measured out for my mug had at least one included.
Wow; this smelled heavenly when it was also steeped up! It’s a very strong lychee aroma; definitely the most powerful aspect of the tea, but there’s also a really soft, soothing jasmine smell backed up by other floral elements like lily and maybe also orchid. It’s actually hard to pick out specific notes from either the black or the green tea used though. I can also smell the cranberry, but only slightly.
Thankfully the cranberry is a bit more noticeable in the taste; it cuts through pretty clearly in the start of the sip with some sweetness but also some tartness that reminds me of cranberry jelly like you’d have around Thanksgiving. However, the very lush taste of the lychee and jasmine over takes it early on leaving me feeling just slightly cheated. I want more cranberry because while it’s so different to me to see it paired with lychee the two flavours go together really well!
The lychee is juicy and rich and reminds me a lot of actual lychee or ‘cocktail’ lychee that’s been canned in its own sweetened juices. It’s mouthwatering and strong as a flavour. I can see where, paired with the sweetness of the cranberry, this could get a little too sweet but thankfully there’s the soothing presence of jasmine that brings this back down to a reasonable level and keeps it distinctly flavoured but smooth and relaxing too.
Also, now that it’s steeped I think the base teas come through just slightly more; the first half of the mug seemed to have a really light vegetal taste to it that was brought more into focus when you concentrated on the jasmine but the slightly malty black base was more present in the aftertaste along with the lingering flavour of lychee, and especially present with the last few tiny sips from the mug when everything had cooled down.
There’s definitely room for improvement, but overall this was a really impressive and well executed tea and I’m absolutely kicking myself for just getting 10g! I’ve now tried 3/5 samples and this is definitely my favourite so far. This company has yet to really disappoint me!