Piccolo

Not the biggest rooibos fan, but this came as a free sample with my Lupicia magazine, so I thought I would pop it in tonight while watching the Lance Armstrong interview on Oprah.

This isn’t bad, and has a nice natural sweetness without needing any sugar. It’s not the best, but the rooibos flavor isn’t super prominent which makes it a little more bearable.

I got a sample of this with my happy bag, and I’ve been eying it with caution ever since. Rooibos and I do not get along, it’s so medicinal and I’m starting to think it might be a migraine trigger for me under certain circumstances. But I decided to brave it, because it’s just a one bag sample AND it reminds me of Dragon Ball Z (which my brother loves, so I’ve spent a lot of time watching it with him haha).

The berry flavor here is nice, kind of jammy mixed berry without one dominant flavor. It’s sweet, kind of honey like and rather thick—like it has honey in it, but with no actual honey. However, the medicinal aspects of the rooibos are just not working for me unfortunately. It’s kind of overpowering, I finished the cup but definitely didn’t love this one.

Tasty! I’m quite enjoying this. I think the flavors are strong enough that I don’t notice the rooibos too much. I’m noticing that most of the not so good reviews for this are because people just don’t like rooibos at all. If you do like rooibos and berries though, you’d love this tea. Even I, neutral to meh about rooibos, enjoy this tea.

This is the bagged variety that arrived in a sample form with my order. So just poured boiling water over it and let it steep while I ate my dinner. No oversteeping issues here. None of the sour woodsy flavor I dislike. The berry flavor here is like berry syrup. I think I’m detecting blueberry and strawberry in here. Blueberry strawberry syrup. Mmmm…makes me long for summer.

Tea #41 from HHTTB2

The berry and honey flavors are definitely strong enough in here to cover the base rooibos flavor. It’s sweet and jammy, and it definitely has a thickish honey feeling on the tongue.

And while the primary woodchip rooibos flavor isn’t really present, unfortunately, it does seem like the more medicinal flavors in the rooibos are bleeding through and pairing with the berry to make something that is definitely reminiscent of cough medicine. I’m not 100% on which is the worse flavor yet.

Tea of the eveing…….

And tea #2 from my $30 Lupicia Fukubukuro bag. (There are five loose teas, two bags of 10 teabags, one bag of extra long tea clips, a good sized tea ball, and a small but nice canvas bag.) This one came as a loose tea. One thing I am really liking about Lupicia is the amounts they sell. I love teas in 50g amounts. It is just enough to try and be sure about a repurchase…..and the repurchase is still small so that you don’t feel badly if your tastes wander to a different type of tea. I think one of my big mistakes in my tea journey has been stocking up on something I might not like so much in 6 months….. Also, since I have quite a bit of tea on the premises, it makes sense to buy small amounts for freshness optimization before using it up.

While rooibos is not my favorite kind of tea, this one is pretty good. I do require this one to be sweetened. It brings out the berry and honey flavors even more…..kind of like Tower of London in rooibos form.

Mug method for 5 minutes.

A sachet of this came with my Lupicia grab bag, although technically it came with the “newsletter” that was included, and I did get a 50g bag of it as well. I figure I would try the sachet first that way if I didn’t like it I wouldn’t open the bag and I could trade it unopened. I’m not the biggest fan of rooibos, see.

Unfortunately, to me this smells like berry but also like menthol. It smells like a cough drop, hardcore. Taste-wise, it’s a bit better, but still… Wait, no, it tastes like sucking on a cough drop. Bleh. I think it’s the honey flavor that’s coming across weird to me. Sometimes I take a sip and it’s not so bad, others it’s quite rough. Well, it does appear that others enjoy this one, so maybe I will be able to trade it away.

I like rooibos teas more than I used to but not too thrilled with this in particular. It’s too sweet, and otherwise I can’t really taste any berry anything in here. Agree with the reviews that claim it tastes like cough syrup. I wondered if this would be better as a latte… it is indeed more palatable with soymilk added so I guess I will be drinking the rest of it this way. Not a favorite for sure.

A package of 5 teabags of this came with my lucky bag. I really, really like this. It’s sweet, and the honey flavor definitely comes through. I don’t get so much of the berry flavors, but the honey does a good job of moderating the rooibos, and making it into something delicious. I’m thinking about adding this to my shopping list after I use up the teabags I have.

Oh, dear. I opened my sample bag to make a pot of this for the hubby and me, and was smacked in the nose by the smell of MEDICINE. I think it may be the rooibos and the honey together producing that smell, but I almost couldn’t get past it, it was so strong. The berries just weren’t helping enough to mask the intense medicinal scent. We let it steep for about 4 minutes, I suppose, while I stayed far away…

I gotta be honest. It may be the pregnancy doing this to me (third trimester, yay!), so while I can only relate what I smelled, it’s up to you, dear reader, how seriously you take my opinions on smell. I have noticed certain things smelling a little off from what they smelled like before, but not everything.

Anyway, more recently I have found myself liking rooiboses less and less, and so I can’t say I was looking forward to this one, but I had wanted to try it so badly, I figured I’d better go through with it now that I have it.

So, with all that said, on to the tea itself. After it cooled enough to drink, the medicinal smell had dumbed down quite a bit, which was a relief. I still couldn’t quite smell the berries. My first sip wasn’t that impressive, but after a few sips I was finding that the honey did actually cover some of the rooibos flavors that I’d been shying away from lately. Rooibos just tastes too sharply metallic for me to really get into it anymore, and I can’t tell if it’s my tastes actually changing, or if this is just a pregnancy thing. Anyway, it’s definitely a well-blended tea- the more it cools, the more hints of strawberry and blueberry I get. I’m wondering how this would do iced.

I added a little milk halfway through the cup, but the tea had cooled so much that this hardly made a difference. Might try that earlier on next time and see what happens. Anyway, in overview, I’m not saying it’s my favorite, but I can definitely tell it’s a well-balanced tea that ended up being rather enjoyable.

As a side note, the hubby suggested that perhaps I should try to get more green rooiboses, since they don’t seem to offend me (I ADORE Teavana’s Rooibos Peach Bloom). I think an experiment is in order… Anybody got any good ones to suggest?

Tea #5 from the Here’s Hoping TTB

It’s really funny how much tastes can change in a few short months. Not long ago you had to practically force me to drink rooibos, i disliked it that much. Now I end most days with a huge mug of it and I’ve really come to enjoy it. This tea would have likely appealed to me even during my ‘I hate rooibos’ phase since I can hardly taste the rooibos when it is steeped for a short time.

While I do like this tea I am disappointed that I can’t taste the apricot. What I do taste is a somewhat generic strawberry flavor and something else which gives it a sweetness. I do wish Lupicia went into more detail when listing the ingredients, I’m not sure if there is really honey in here, or just a honey flavor. The website only says this is a rooibos tea scented with honey and sweet berries, so not descriptive at all.

This tea will not be continuing on.