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When we were at Dagnino this weekend, I also picked up some samples (and possibly a tin of something, but I will admit to nothing). They sell single bags for €1, which is pretty fair if you just want to try something out. I’ve always been curious about this one, and I’ve been craving rooibos lately (clearly something is wrong) so I grabbed it.

The bag smells of vanilla, however not the vanilla of MF’s Black Vanilla – something even subtler and lightly spicy. I’m still on the lookout for that true, boozy, rich Bourbon vanilla I had hoped for in the black tea, but this is a step back, more than anything. Flavour wise, this is pure gingerbread to me. Vanilla? No. Cloves. That’s all the sweetspicyness amounts to for me. This is a little frustrating, as gingerbread and individual gingerbread spices are some of the all-time worst flavours for me.

What saves this one, though, is the caramelly vanilla notes right at the end of the sip. This is what lingers, and it’s pretty comforting. I’m drinking this in bed, and it makes me want to wear my mom-knit socks and be all autumnal.

This one is not for me, though, in spite of the fair rooibos and endsippage noms.

[Sample bag picked up at Dagnino in Rome, April 2014.]
[Polished off in Rome, April 2014.]

This is the second Tazo tea I picked up. It was actually the smell of this that made me look more closely at the box… because it smelled so strongly of artificial orange candy that I suspected for a moment I’d misread completely.

Who writes this copy.

Who are you people.

This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever read. It’s so over-the-top pretentious it’s offensive. Also sucky, sucky prose; please enjoy this gem: “Explore lemongrass lawns, carpets of chamomile and the living history of your ancestors.” I guess someone graduated from Alliteration U summa cum laude. And whose ancestors would that be? Are they somehow connected to the great tradition of child slave labour on tea plantations? So lofty! So spiritual! Let’s all pose in First Nations headdresses and bindis together!

The tea is… not quite as bad as its product copy. The vile orange is mostly gone in the cup, but Tazo’s apricot flavouring leaves a lot to be desired. The promised vanilla is nowhere to be found and there is a weird, filmy aftertaste that makes me think of Tang powder.

No.

Tazo, I think I have some random tea bags I’ve picked up here and there, but when I’m done with those, I’m done with you.

[Picked up at Whole Foods in NOLA, March 2014.]

I did score some tea when I was in NOLA. Two kinds of Tazo from Whole Foods, three loose leafs from a local tea shop, and one bag of Intelligentsia’s jasmine (at O’Hare, but it counts). This is the first Tazo – I figured it would be nice to have some easily drunk bagged greens for travel, so this was an experiment.

These are not so ideal for travel, though – the little envelopes are paper, which always irks me. Paper is fine as long as there’s also an outer layer of plastic – however pointless and wasteful – but I do prefer just plastic. (Kusmi have it down for sure; great, pretty plastic envelopes, and really lovely tea bags inside.) In addition, with a recommended steeping temperature of 80 degrees C, this is a little too finicky for travel water.

In the bag, this smells of nothing. Steeped, this also smells of nothing. Possibly a slight whiff of cucumber, but it’s more reminiscent of zucchini, seeing as I so rarely come across warm cucumber. Flavour wise, I don’t get any peach whatsoever, only a somewhat fishy vegetal flavour presence that doesn’t really linger. I assumed this would be a plain green (you know, with a name like ‘Peachy Green’, but clearly I’m just not paranoid enough) but it is, in fact a green-black blend. This would explain the slight fishiness, if nothing else.

This isn’t unpalatable, but mostly because it just doesn’t have enough flavour to have personality. It’s fairly unoffensive and definitely something I will try to cold steep, or drink with food. However, it’s quite far from the perfect, peachy green travel tea I was looking for.

ETA: When it cools, it acquires a round sweetness that is quite pleasing and does carry some small peachy note. +5

[Picked up at Whole Foods in NOLA, March 2014.]

Okay, so I finally get around to this – this is from my swap with Kat_Maria, who spoiled me insanely. I mean, I can’t even. No. She sent me EVERY TEA IN THE WORLD. And so much stuff for Project Green and Project Jasmine and Project Peach, I don’t even know how to thank her, except offer to be her European tea dealer for life.

This is a bag – the dry tea smells lovely, and it reminds me of Lupicia’s discontinued Apricot Houji, but with a much rounder, sweeter finish. I was a little surprised to see the suggested steeping time was 5 minutes, with boiling water – I’m used to fairly green oolongs that steep 2 minutes or less. I assume that gives that this is a blacker oolong than what I’m used to, and both in scent and taste this does come off very black to me.

I’m so grateful to Kat_Maria for including this – I have very little experience with Adagio and have been considering placing an order. This sounded like a given Anna tea, but after being presented with the opportunity to sample this beforehand, I won’t include it in my order. Don’t get me wrong – it’s a very good blackish oolong, and the balance of the peach and the tea is very well executed. The peach (a fairly soft, apricoty peach) is present throughout the sip and lingers nicely. And yet, it’s just too black to be oolongy enough for me.

If it were only greener.

[From my swap with Kat_Maria, Rome, March 2014.]

This one has grown on me a little bit, to be honest – it smells so completely delicious and I find more complexity in it flavour wise, too. At the same time, it’s hard to tell to what extent this is a quality tea – maybe it’s just bells and whistles and I’m falling for it. I mean – German tea companies, who can take them seriously? (Yes, I said that in a heavy French accent.)

I had another jasmin tea this weekend (my friend Em embarked upon her very first Birthday Week; decadence reigned) the Jasmin Mandarin from Mariage Frères, expertly served, as always, by the lovely staff at Dagnino. It’s such a great place to enjoy tea and dessert – their cassata is out of this world. But I digress – I will pick up some Jasmin Mandarin and give it a fair review at a later date… and wait patiently for dessertster.com for the full cassata write-up.

This cup, though, is pleasantly floral and without bitterness, in spite of the fact that I was distracted and brewed it a little too hot, Lupicia style. I’m having some kind of late morning snack consisting of fruit and almond butter. The latter is so good and I wish I’d picked up a couple more jars at Whole Foods in NOLA. But I felt a need to check out how organic and responsible Justin’s actually were – nothing ticks me off more than pretend organic, like, ‘oh, we source everything locally, except this palm oil that we have no idea where it comes from, but that’s probably not a controversial product at all’.

But I needn’t have worried, because Justin’s are so OCD about their product sourcing they even have detailed carbon footprint charts for every single ingredient on their website. With all the privilege I enjoy, I’m completely fascist about buying organic whenever I can – quality over quantity consumption appeals to me much more. This time around in Italy, there are so many more organic choices on the shelves compared to just a few years back, which is cool.

Anyway, I need to finish my banan(n)a and strawberries and get on with my day.

I figured this would be one of Lupicia’s candy oolongs – see, I’ve found there are two main categories. The candy oolongs are all rolled oolongs, and all over the top in terms of bursting-with-flavour fruitiness – like the Melon Oolong, or this one. They all have added pieces of something reminding me of those brightly coloured Japanese sugar candies and they look, smell, and taste very fun and happy.

Then there are the full-leaf oolongs, which are far more earthy and ripe both as regards scent and flavour. Examples would be the Momo Oolong Super Grade, and the Ripe Mango Oolong.

In the bag, this is all candy – it’s a sweet-fruity tangerine candy explosion. but – and here is the surprising aspect of this tea – in the cup, it is far more delicate that expected, and more along the lines of the full-leaf oolongs. Subtle, delicate, complex, natural. It’s supposed to be tangerine, but I find it most resembles satsuma-meets-blood orange.

It’s lovely and infinitely drinkable, but will probably surprise fans of other Lupicia candy oolongs with its subtlety. Objectively, this might deserve a somewhat lower grade, but I’m increasingly fond of citrus-flavoured teas, and if I find a good one – like the Amanatsu – it’s going to be a keeper.

[From my Lupicia order to Rome, April 2014.]

How utterly weird – this is so much closer to what I expected the Milk Caramel I tried yesterday to be. And may I say wow. This is a very impressive tea.

In the bag it smells like a gooey, chestnutty bread pudding. There is a toffee-like quality to it, too, which carries through right into the cup. Steeped, it’s all melty toffee and chestnut – it reminds me a lot of making ice cream; as it simmers, the custard base carries the same thick sweetness that comes through in this tea. Every sip is beautifully balanced – silky, creamy and rich.

It’s even ridiculously good cold.

This is probably the last time I’m going to review this many Lupicia teas in a row, because I feel nothing like my disdainful, tea-litist self after six of these lovefests. Read this in the meantime, lest you forget my true nature: http://steepster.com/clareborn/posts/212352

Lupicia, please marry me. Please, please, pleaaasehhhh.

[From my Lupicia order to Rome, April 2014.]

I had no special hopes for this one – I know I’m beginning to sound like a broken record here, but this order was the first time I purchased from Lupicia without doing the full-on, in-store smelling thing, so I really just picked out things that could just as easily be a miss.

In the bag, this is a beautiful oolong – it comes out even prettier steeped, and that’s high praise indeed for a pile of wet tea leaf. It smells fantastic. I don’t even know how to describe it – I’m trying to think back to my own experiences with mirabelle plums, and I keep coming back to this cake, or this tarte, really, compact like a clafoutis but far less eggy, with plums. Their skins were a deep burgundy purple, though, not the pale gold that makes me think of mirabelles.

What really, really, really gets me here, though – and keep in mind I’m still just smelling this tea – is the presence of heavy, smooth, thick vanilla. It’s right there, at the end of the sniff, as exciting and unexpected as the return of a long-lost lover. Same thing in the cup – first a crazy, jubilant, sweetplummy fruitiness, and then the lushest of , Baby. You’re back. vanilla sips. There is definitely a floral element here, too, but I’ve had enough of Lupicia’s flavoured oolongs to place this firmly in the fruit category.

This is really quite something, a wonderful tea, but I’ve been so radically spoiled in terms of Lupicia oolongs that I don’t quite know how to grade this. If I were to change this rating in the future, though, I’m pretty sure it would be nudged upwards, rather than downwards.

[From my Lupicia order to Rome, April 2014.]

I already told you about the liquid, cherry-flavoured penicillin that was forced upon me when I was but a tiny Anna, so I will spare you a rerun. Keywords like, ‘very vomity’, ‘traumatized’, and ‘still terrified of Dr. Pepper’ might help jog your memory.

Artificial cherry flavouring, hence, is about as far from what I can take as possible, palate wise. So in the interest of pushing boundaries, here I am with some of this. I don’t know if it’s one of those limited edition blends, but it comes in a special, extra-pretty tin, which is nice.

Again, I am conflicted when it comes to cherry. I mean – what do cherries smell like? What do they taste like? It’s one of the most elusive flavours to me, which might be a further reason (I mean in addition to the PTSD, mom) why it’s so hard for me to accept artificial cherry flavouring.

So does the dry tea smell like cherry? I don’t know. It doesn’t smell of Dr. Pepper, not even close to anything coughsyrupy or medical. It could be cherry preserves, I guess – more like jam than maraschino, though. The scent is rich and thick and darkly, stickily red – it makes me think of the cherry pie in Twin Peaks.

In the cup, the scent metamorphoses to something much closer to the cherry I’m used to. But as you may remember, Lupicia also do the bitter almondy, plummy nuance of stone fruit – Ume Vert is one of my most unexpected favourites. This scent lands somewhere in between. I get both the plum pit and the potentially scary cherry.

Taste wise, I’m surprised to say I can drink this without any signs of retching or wanting to curl up in a fetal position and mutter reassuringly to myself. The steeped tea is in no way cloying, and the aftertaste is lightly floral. All in all, this is a fairly delicate tea – not overly complex, but pleasant and highly drinkable. If I sound detached, it’s because I have no idea what just happened, but apparently there’s a cherry-flavoured tea that I can both drink and enjoy? Okay – mind blown.

ETA: Well, this is definitely a limited edition… with the little kicker that it actually doesn’t exist on the US site. This is a first, but the US do get the black version, and it’s called Cerisier, so that’s the name I’ll enter into the database. Oh, Japan, you and your obsession with French stuff. SO confuse.

ETA 2: In other news, French Lupicia have now added an English version of the website… with English names that are direct translations of the French names for the teas, and not pulled from the US site. Just to make things a little bit more confusing. But hey, somewhere a translator got paid, and I’m all for that.

[From my Lupicia order to Rome, April 2014.]

Oh, oh, oh, so nice. You remember that little Apricot Houji burial that took place at Fiumicino a while back? http://steepster.com/clareborn/posts/229850

This one has that same perfectly balanced smooth houijicha base with the addition of fruitiness. Comparing this to the apricot is somewhat unfair – in that tea, one fruit was allowed the full range of flavour, and, at that, the fruit in question was one Lupicia pulled off flawlessly. In this case, the fruit flavour is more generic.

It’s not quite Apple & Berry territory, but muscat grape and apple, well – they do blend together fairly seamlessly, and I can’t say I distinguish the individual fruit flavours. I think that’s good, because I was somewhat put off by the apple when I considered this – Lupicia’s apple is a crisp, green one with a slightly yeasty aftertaste I wasn’t convinced would go well with the earthy houji.

Here, though, the apple is rounded off by the muscat grape on the tonguetip – their sweetness slowly dissipates to give way to the full earthiness of the houji, which is as exceptional as always. The booziness of the dry tea is quite toned down in the cup, which I consider a good thing in this case – I do love my boozy teas, but when the base tea is this good, I want it to shine.

(Also a big thanks to darling devious tea temptress Christina for pointing me in the way of some other flavoured houjichas that I am now dying to try.)

[From my Lupicia order to Rome, April 2014.]