OMG. The dry leaf smells soooooo good. When I was little, my grandma would buy key lime pie from the store every time I visited her – I don’t remember the brand but I think it came in a yellow box. Anyway, she did this every visit from before I was born (though okay, then the pie was for my dad) until that pie was discontinued (or the area stores stopped carrying it) when I was around 12 years old. So key lime to me equals visits to grandma. And the dry leaf smells just like that pie did. Like exactly. Makes me feel like I’m at my grandma’s house.
The smell of the steeped tea isn’t quite as obviously key lime pie-ish but it’s noticeably key lime. There is key lime then a bit of creamy (which I think is the coconut ‘cause I’m not picking it up anywhere else) and then tea. I have a feeling that drinking this tea will be disappointing simply because it will not be an actual key lime pie bought by my grandmother.
Okay, it officially does not taste like I’m actually eating pie, but it does taste like key lime pie (if that differentiation makes sense). It’s not as shockingly and heavily flavored as the key lime pie of my memories, but I can’t not think about key lime pie as I drink this. I know it’s supposed to be key lime coconut, but whether it is the actual taste or just the mental key lime pie association I have going on, the coconut just reads to me as the creamy topping on the top of a pie combined with the sweetness of the graham cracker crust. The lime is the most noticeable thing – it’s very fresh tasting, crisp and sweet with a faint hint of tart. The actual tea taste is very subtle – it hides behind the lime most of the time except when I just hold the tea in my mouth for a few seconds. And even then it’s still pretty quiet and non-distinct. It might also lend a bit of the graham cracker crust feeling/taste, I’m not sure.
Figuring out how to rate this tea is tough. Because, quite frankly, I love it. But I love it because it tastes like key lime pie and that is a taste that has a lot of happy childhood associations for me and I know that is influencing me. I just can’t quite figure out how much I would love the tea if it didn’t have those associations. Would I be disappointed that it’s not strongly coconut? Would I be sad the tea taste isn’t stronger? Or would I say, “Hey, this is a kick ass key lime tea!”? I dunno. If this were flavored after a pecan pie (which I didn’t like until I became an adult), I have to think I’d still love how the flavoring was done. The flavoring is so nice that I think that, if Lupicia did key lime pie flavored tea, it would be very similar to this (which, considering how well I think they typically do flavored teas, is a big compliment). So thinking about it that way, I can’t think that I’m giving this more than 5 or 10 happy childhood bonus points. Which means, yeah, good tea.
I seriously want a key lime pie now.
Too funny I was just looking this up to review it. I loved it too. :-) Yummy, I want Key Lime Pie now too.
Yay! I’m glad I’m not the only one that got pie in a cup! :) So tasty!