Chestnut

Oh man, this is one delicious tea. This is another one I wasn’t sure about but it’s a seasonal blend so I wanted to snag it before it’s gone. Chestnut is kind of a finnicky flavor, but once again Lupicia has nailed it.

It actually smells heavily of caramel. It’s like caramel-covered chestnuts! Sweet, dense, and delicious. It is a really nostalgic taste, it reminds me of childhood. The green base goes perfectly and keeps it from being too heavy or sweet. It’s like airy holiday treats in a glass! I am seriously so in love with this tea. It also stands up to tons of infusions: I’ve done one hot brew and two cold brews with the same leaves!

Enjoying for afternoon tea with R, alongside graham crackers spread with a blender mix of cream cheese, greek yogurt, dried apricots, and honey. Dry and steeped this smells good, sweet and nutty. You can see caramel bits in the dry blend, and that shines through in the taste without being TOO cloying. The body and taste is lighter of course than the black based chestnut blends from Lupicia (of which Chaud Les Marrons!, with its smoothed out warmth akin to Kusmi’s Caramel, continues to be my favorite; the chocolate one, while not terrible, was disappointing), but still richer and sweeter than you expect from a green. Steeps up a bright, almost glowing warm gold-green. I imagine this might be divine coldsteeped once the weather warms up as my favorite coldsteeped greens tend to be nutty and sweet. Very enjoyable, worth waiting nearly a year (!) for (it was out of stock forever and ever and when I finally got an email notification it was available again I was shocked, figured it was a lost cause by now, ha).

I’ll never figure out how Lupicia and Den’s manage to offer flavored greens where the recommended steep temp is boiling, and it works. Oh the mysteries of life.

I drank this one earlier today while doing some work. I wanted to try this one (and once again, Alphakitty was willing to oblige… thanks so much!) because I love nutty flavored things and nutty flavored teas. I wasn’t totally sure about chestnut because I didn’t grow up eating roasted chestnuts or anything so I am not super familiar with the taste of them. I do love chestnut-filled mochi that I buy at the asian grocer, so I figured that there would be a good chance I would like this.

To me, this is like you took some of the buttery, nutty, and what I call cookie-ish notes that are naturally present in some awesome straight green teas and turned them up to 11. I was never able to properly identify those notes in those teas, but now I know they are chestnut notes. I would assume that the base teas contain some of these notes to start, but they have just added to them in such a way that it makes it seem like it is totally natural. Really, quite a delicious tea and one that I could definitely see getting more of.

Holy cow is this tasty! Sweet roasted chestnuts! Exactly like chestnuts! Amazing! I keep expecting a mouthful of actual chestnut when I sip this, but all I get is tea. Working with this luscious chestnut taste is the lightly grassy green tea that balances out the richness of the flavor. Absolutely wonderful! I love chestnuts, but they are so very seasonal. Now I can have chestnuts whenever I want! weeeee!

I love, love, love this tea! The aroma and taste of chestnut was beautiful. At first I expected the sweetness of honey-glazed chestnut, but instead it was the mellow sweetness and nuttiness of roasted chestnut. It’s good that it had a smooth green tea base instead of black tea base, cos I think the strength of black tea might overwhelm the delicate flavours. :)

The more I mention this tea, the more I want this tea. The more I want this tea, the more I drink this tea. The more I drink this tea, the more I like this tea. I really like this tea.
It is a lot lighter than most teas I favor, but it has a really nice buttery chestnut taste that pairs well with the green base. The flavor is a little subtle on the sip, but you get a long nice after taste that is really great. If I leave my cup too long and it cools, the taste isn’t nearly as great which makes me wonder if it would be good cold steeped. Anyway, I love the bright chestnut flavor in this tea!

I’ve been sipping on this for a day and a half now. Lasted through almost four infusions!

The dry leaves smell a little sweet, there are fairly good sized chunks of chestnut in the tea, like the size of baking chips. I want to pluck them out and eat them!

The tea is so light, and doesn’t get dark at all. And it pairs perfectly with the chestnut. The flavor is almost pure chestnut, sweet, roasty, and the smell is heavenly!

I will say I am biased, I love roasted chestnuts, but darn they are so much work to make! This tea is just so lovely with its sweet chestnut taste. It’s not overpowering and the sweetness lasted through all but the very last infusion, when the green made a big show for the finale! Yum all the way through!

I’ve been meaning to try this one for weeks, and tonight I finally got around to it.

The scent of the dry leaves and the aroma of the brewed tea are both really sweet. The smell evokes a childhood memory of the extreme sugary sweetness of fairy floss on a stick.

But before you throw up your hands in horror, I’ll add that the taste of the tea itself is not impossibly sweet. It’s not bitter, but the flavour of the tea – looks like sencha to me – really comes through. As with my favourite fruit flavoured teas from Lupicia, there’s an excellent balance at work in which the aroma plays an important part.

The sweetness dissipates a bit as the tea cools, but it’s still a really good cup of tea all the way to the end.

…Huh?
What’s this on my dashboard?
…Could it really be?

JMKauftheil… that guy hasn’t posted in ages! I almost forgot about him…
Oh, who am I kidding? A day hasn’t gone by that I haven’t tenderly missed the way his refined knowledge and appreciation of tea infuses so exquisitely with his masterful finesse of words, that it can’t be explained in any way but convenient metaphor.
Is he really back, to discuss teas in a way that causes my eyes to experience senses beyond sight? Words flowing so elegantly, it’s as if I’m seeing music, caressing the pupil like a lover’s touch…
Is it so? Is it really so?

Keep your clothes on ladies and gentlemen, it is so. Well, the gentlemen should keep their clothes on, at least.

Yep. I’m back. For the night at least.
I’m staying up late making a hefty load of iced teas tonight, and I figured I might as well spend it with an old friend – Tee Loggins McGee.

Where have I been, you ask? Oh, you’re asking all right…
It’s been a few months, right? Five or so…
Well, we can skip over a few identity crises, a few self-discoveries, a few mistakes, a few redemptions, a few steps backward, and a few steps forward, and just live in the moment:
I got a weekend job as a canvasser (the people that go door to door, raising funds for organizations (non-profit, political, etc), and I’m working with a group called Environment California. Long hours, hard work, and the rollercoaster of losing then regaining my faith in humanity – all at minimum wage. I love it.
Tomorrow, as I happened to remember after returning from school around 9:30, we planned to have a potluck at work. I promised to bring some iced tea. For about ten people. And I need to transport it over a windy highway – Highway 17, for those of you familiar – in the rain, no less.
I REALLY hope they didn’t change the plans without me.

I bought three 1-gallon jugs of water from 7-eleven, and I intend to fill them by the end of the night. I have three of my vessels in action, and my entire stock of tea to play with.
Let’s see how this all turns out, eh?

Jug #1: Green tea

So, I started with the remainder of the Chestnut green tea I’ve had from Lupicia, just sitting around.
Two infusions of that, in my Lupicia iced-tea maker, and I filled up about half a gallon. I turned to making some Jasmine in my tetsubin… but that’s a notably smaller quantity. So far, I’ve made two infusions of that, which is about equal to one of the ice-tea maker thing. I think I’ve about exhausted the Jasmine, so if anyone one is actively reading this, what do you think of maybe a little Gunpowder? Hm?
I’ll rate it all when I got the jug full.

Gonna be up all night, folks, so expect a few updates.

Based on description alone (Lupicia used to describe it as having a “nostalgic” taste, whatever that is), I probably would never have purchased this tea. I received it in a Fukubukoro New Years’ bag two years ago, and it is now a firm favorite.
The green tea looks like a Japanese Sencha with chunks of white chestnut. The chestnut flavor lends the tea a very toasty and slightly sweet aroma. It is wonderful and soothing with a little honey or agave syrup. I drink this tea as much for the scent as the flavor – almost daily in fall and winter.