Ah, I love this tea! It smells wonderfully sweet in the bag, very fruity. There are little cubes of dried fruit in this blend, along with dark pink peppercorns. When you steep it, you start to smell the pepper a bit more, but the aroma remains mostly fruity. I just wish Lupicia’s site specified which fruits are included in this tea… I know there’s dried mango in here, and I also detect hints of peach and maybe even pineapple. Anyway, it’s delicious! Sweet and tropical with golden fruits and just a hint of husky pepper. Also, the tea base is surprisingly smooth, for a black tea. Not as strong or astringent as the bases in a lot of flavored black teas I’ve tried. Still has the bitter aftertaste of a black tea, though, and the pepper note accentuates this. (It’s perfect for someone like me, who craves those sweet/spicy flavors!) For anyone who wants a sweeter version, I highly recommend adding honey or some other sweetener. It eliminates the bitterness, and really brings out the fruit.
Overall, this is one of my favorite teas from Lupicia! I have to say, I’ve enjoyed all the flavored teas I’ve tried from them. Especially the sweet fruity ones. I even bought a few of the tropical blends for my friends, and they’re all hooked.
By the way, I’m not sure where the description about the monk’s eyelids came from… On the Lupicia USA site, the description for this tea is, “Black tea with refreshing sweet fruit cuts and pink peppers which look like Daruma are added.” Which I thought was really cute!
For anyone who’s curious, daruma are a type of Japanese doll. They’re round and squat, and usually red. They often start out with blank eyes. When you buy one, you’re supposed to draw the pupil in one of their eyes, and make a wish. Then you fill in the other eye when your wish comes true. (They were named after a famous monk called Bodhidharma; it looks like the eyelid reference has to do with some of the folklore surrounding him?) I just wanted to mention that here, because I thought the idea of the peppercorns being tiny daruma dolls was adorable. I’ll have to try brewing a cup around New Year’s… There’s supposed to be a tradition of buying new dolls around that time. (Sort of like New Year’s resolutions, maybe?)
Anyway, I would heartily recommend this tea! Especially to anyone who enjoys fruit-flavored blacks. (Sometimes I open up the bag just to smell the dry leaves… Yum.)
