I wanted something citrus-y today, but most of my citrus teas have a lime kind of flavoring to them and I wanted something more along the lines of orange. Then I remembered that Auggy had sent me this so…bam.
I popped open the bag and gave it a whiff while I read her tasting note. It smelled like orange sherbet, which is my favorite kind of ice cream, so I got a little excited. I was surprised to see that this sucker is supposed to be steeped in boiling water, but I took one for the team and did it anyway.
It didn’t scald anything, shockingly enough [or not, maybe, since Lupicia says to boil it], and it was actually pretty light in flavor. It definitely tasted like an orange. A sweet orange. Really, more of a synthetic orange. Like the kind of orange you’d taste in a Capri Sun, as opposed to something fresh squeezed. Maybe orange jello. It didn’t have any tartness to it, which I didn’t miss.
To be fair, this is comparing it to something like a navel orange, though, and not a mandarin which typically read much sweeter to me. However, it still doesn’t quite taste natural. The flavor is also light. Barely there. Like something you know is definitely there, but you have to grasp at.
In my mind, this is both good and bad. Bad, in that if you reach for this because you’re craving that flavor it probably won’t sate you. Good, because it keeps it from being…well, Capri Sun. This wouldn’t be an every day tea for me, and I think that the orange flavor being both so light and unnatural tasting is going to keep me from buying it. I’ll enjoy what I have left, though. In the meantime, I have a box of orange jello powder in the kitchen if I want that flavor. No Capri Sun, though. [I always hated the stabby pouch thing. Led to disaster too many times.]
