Vanilla Lapacho

Unsweetened and without soy milk, this tea tasted bizarre and quite unpleasant. The best way I can describe it is to say that it tasted like what it would be like to drink paper. Really. With sweetener and no soy milk, it was pretty much the same story. I was going to write this off as a complete failure, but thought I’d give it a go with a bit of soy milk (I’d guess about ¼ of the drink was made of up soy milk and ¾ from water.) It changed the tea a lot! It then had a taste (and I know this sounds like not the best thing, but bear with me) that was creamy, woody, milky, and sweet. There’s something just a bit unpleasant in the end of the mouthful, but otherwise it’s pretty comforting, soft, and smooth. If the idea of drinking something that tastes like wood sounds off-putting to you, just think (in this case, at least): the smells of vanilla and wood together are so good. This is that smell in drink form. It makes sense.

After this experience, I would strongly recommend never drinking lapacho tea without milk and sweetener. It’s really gross, to be honest. The milk is essential here. Otherwise, you’re drinking bitter, paper tasting, wood water. Does that sound appetising? What about a milky, light, sweet combination of woodsy tastes with a very subtle hint of cherry and a delicate taste of vanilla? I didn’t know what to expect with this tea, and the smell beforehand told me nothing. If it were nothing else, this would be a unique take on vanilla tea for sure. But it’s also an airy, comforting tea that for some reason reminds me a little bit of drinking warm milk before bed when I was younger.

Update: I drank this again today…it tasted like drinking dirt. I don’t know if the tea went off or something, but I was not at all impressed with what I tasted. There’s “earthy” tastes, and I think they can definitely be appealing, and then there’s things that just taste like licking the ground.Id have to put this in the latter category.