Piccolo

A lot of my cabinet is lupicia these days so I probably should work at tasting some more of it. This was a sample from one of the importers of lupicia japan. Need to switch to decaf because I was getting a little too buzzed.

Preparation: Western (No additives)
Tasting Note: Looking at this tea bag it had a tiny yellow-cream looking candy in it, makes me wonder if the japan piccolo is different from the US one. Luckily my latest order from Lupicia Hawaii came with a Piccolo tea bag so I can do a comparison later. The photos on the hawaiian site do not have candies pictured but the japan site does, so maybe the ingredients are slightly different?

Anyways, back to the tasting the first few sips hot are roasty surprisingly, there is definitely honey, creaminess and apricot. As the tea cools down to more of a “warm” temp, the tea has more of a strawberry creamy-nutty note and there is a very slight bit more rooibos medicinal note that is apparent. I think overall though the rooibos is still pretty well covered at this point.

This is a sample sachet I received in my most recent Lupicia order. I don’t think I’ve tried any of Lupicia’s herbal or wellness blends until now. It smells mostly of strawberry flavoring but there’s also something medicinal about it. The taste is mostly rooibos. Maybe with some vanilla? I don’t know the ingredients since I only received a sample, but the description mentions honey, apricot, and berries. Overall, I think I much prefer the smell of this one over the taste. As it cools, it’s starting to taste flat somehow. Not sure I’ll be finishing it.

This was one of the free samples in my last Lupicia order, and while I am grateful for free samples I sure was disappointed to see this rooibos. I probably should have given it away, but I remembered trying their caramel and rum rooibos and it was pretty good, so I was hoping.

Opened the bag. BLECH. Rooibos. Where’s the berry? Still hoping it wouldn’t TASTE like rooibos, I steeped it to go with supper, red bean soup – kind of like a vegetarian chili. With the food, it was innocuous enough because the spices drowned it out, but once I finished my food…blech. This pretty much just tasted like straight rooibos to me.

Maybe I should drink it once a month or so and see if I can develop a taste for it. If you want to know what this tasted like, take a hit off a bottle of Robitussin.

Unfortunately, the taste lingers. And lingers. And lingers…
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It doesn’t smell like medicine to me in its dry form, just a very strong berry-red fruit of some kind aroma.

After steeping it’s a pretty, cranberry color and clear, and it smells like strawberries and vanilla. I am guessing the vanilla is the rooibos. Fortunately, it does not have any hamster cage attributes. Apricot? Maybe if I stretch. Same with the honey. It’s very strawberry/vanilla for me.

The taste has more apricot than the smell, and also some strawberry and vanilla. I agree with those who used the adjective “jammy.” There’s something about it that is reminiscent of jam, though not in the mouthfeel. It’s not thick.

In any case, I had worried at first that this would be one of those blends that I thought would have been better with green rooibos. But Lupicia did a nice job with the red — they seem to have avoided all the things that could make it go pear-shaped. Which basically, for me, means having it be taste-able.

The only thing I taste that makes me aware this is rooibos is the vanilla and an ever so slight reediness.

Definitely more enjoyable than the non-caffeinated options I’ve been drinking most lately (chamomile and chamomile blends).

If you generally aren’t a fan of rooibos because of how overpowering it can be then you may want to try this. It’s very well balanced. The rooibos created a creamy atmosphere for the apricot and berries. The honey helps keep the generally over powering flavor of the rooibos in check. Also need to add that the aroma of this one is very nice. Would make a great was melt scent.

contrary to a lot of the other reviewers, I really liked this tea and didn’t find the taste to be too medicinal or sweet — it definitely smells very strong, but once steeped the flavor is a good balance between the mellow woodiness or rooibos and the fruity flavors.

I got this in a bagged tea sampler I got for Valentine’s Day :3 I added milk and a tiny bit of sugar. I’m not a huge fan of rooibos but I kind of like this one. The main flavor I’m getting is honey. There is some light, sweet berry notes.

Disclaimer: Rooibos isn’t my favorite, but I don’t dislike it.

UPDATE: Not sure what happened but I now enjoy this tea immensely! I may have strayed away from Lupicia’s steeping instructions, but this time I followed it, steeping the bag in 150ml of boiling water for 5 minutes. The tea was smooth and velvety, sweet but not overly so. Raising my score from 61 to 80!

ORIGINAL: Piccolo is one of my remaining samples from the Book of Tea set from Lupicia. The smell of the dry leaves is very pretty with a strong scent of apricot, honey and berry. The brew had a full velvety mouth feel and the flavors masked the medicinal qualities of the rooibos enough for me to enjoy it. The instructions indicate that milk can be added, but I didn’t feel the need to add.

I bought this in France, labelled as “Bambino”, number 9202. I do think it is the same tea.

I drink a lot of rooibos, after a certain hour, caffeine gives me insomnia, and rooibos is the tisane I feel closer to drinking real tea. I find it really digestive as well. Rooibos is something I keep needing to renew my stock of, and which I was looking for in my first Lupicia visit. The rooibos on offer did not seem too inspiring but this was the most appealing.

And at first brew it does not disappoint. It smells dry, very much of strawberry, vanilla and apricot. The apricot taste disappears in the liquour which is mostly berry -vanilla like (I sweetened this with honey, because I had a cold so don´t know how honey like it is without real honey added), but as it cools down it reemerges in the background again. The flavour is very intense. The rooibos base is pretty quiet underneath it all, nothing much to say about it in this first time.

A note, I really really like this hermetic packaging of theirs. It´s very tough and squashable (I bought a LOT of stuff in this visit), no smell cross contamination, and the tea is incredibly fresh when you open the package. 50 grams will probably be drunk fast enough to not get stale. I think we pay more for this packaging (I paid 5 euros for 50 grams, which would aka 10 euros for 100 grams, a bit more than Mariage Freres or The o Dor rooibos), but if we discount this type of packaging is expensive it might be worth it, for the extra freshness. More packaging to recycle, and maybe harder to recycle though, but to keep tea fresh, I can not resist.

Mmm. Sadly, another sipdown. I’m picking up strawberry, raspberry, and creamy vanilla. It’s annoying that Lupicia doesn’t clearly list blend ingredients. I don’t think there’s supposed to be any vanilla here – maybe my tastebuds are confusing the honey flavoring for vanilla. Some rice milk brings out the creaminess and amplifies the strawberry & raspberry flavors. I got a good second steep out of this final sachet, too.

This was part of my Lupicia happy bag. So far I’m quite pleased with their blends. However, the absence of a proper ingredients list is seriously off-putting. I will probably buy next year’s happy bag anyway though – the price is too good.