333 Tasting Notes
After seeing this on the list of the highest rated Lupicia teas on this site, I knew I had to try it the next time I stopped by the store. Fortunately, this tea was in stock when I visited.
The dry blend consists of sizable green tea leaves and chestnut pieces. (I tried to nibble on one, but it was quite fossilized, so I wouldn’t recommend doing so!) There’s a faintly sweet chestnut aroma, which becomes more apparent once brewed. The tea liquor is a clear, light yellow-green, and the flavor is a welcoming blend of roasted chestnuts and light, crisp, very springtime-ish green tea. It is a touch sugary, which is probably from the preparation of the nuts, but not enough to detract. As a cozy tea it’s perfect, comforting without being overly strong or too heavily flavored.
Tried another iced tea at the local Coffee Bean. The tea base was rather bitter and didn’t have distinguishing qualities, and I’m not sure whether that was due to variations in in-store preparation, or the quality of the tea itself. Or maybe, as the name suggests, it was meant to be imbibed with a heaping amount of sugar. The rose fragrance was distinct, but didn’t really improve the experience. At any rate, the Pacific Coast blend is a much better example of a good iced tea from this brand.
This is another tea blend I bought on my first visit to Lily Chai Tea. In-store, the flavor of this blend was described to me as “a little dirty”, which may not be the most appealing-sounding, but it piqued my curiosity. While there isn’t an ingredients list (something I hope they’ll fix soon), I can see green tea, blue cornflower petals, and various kinds of berries in it. The dry tea has a fruity, earthy smell.
I brewed this one cold and enjoyed it as the afternoon’s iced tea. There is much less of the fruity sweetness in the flavor, and the earthiness dominates much more. There’s a tiny bit of tartness and some interesting herbal/vegetal flavors well. So yes, it is kind of dirt-like, but in a good, refreshing way. While the blend may resemble some of Teavanna’s fruity ones, which I know have very mixed reception, I think it’s much more unique.
The weekend means it’s time to try new teas!
This is an almond and coconut black tea blend I bought from a local tea store, Lily Chai Tea, that opened recently. As I already have the Paromi Coconut Almond blend, I brewed both under the same conditions to compare.
The dry leaf mixture for both look about the same—black tea with a lot of coconut and almond shavings. The Snow Flake smells much more prominently of sweet almond, a very marzipan-like aroma, which I love. The Paromi smells more like a balance of the two, but more like cocoa than either of the ingredients.
Both teas brewed to the same amber-orange color, and both had some minimal droplets of oils from the coconut and almond float to the top…ah well, that probably won’t hurt. Even though I had two visually identical cups, there was no mistaking which was which by the aroma. In terms of flavor, the Snow Flake blend definitely favors the almond as well. It’s very smooth, and I can taste that the black tea itself is of fairly good quality, crisp with a natural fruitiness. The Paromi is richer and slightly more astringent, with the flavors more difficult to tell apart from each other but working well as a mix.
Overall, I prefer the Snow Flake more as a summery breakfast blend, though both are enjoyable. If anyone is in Orange County (southern California) I’d recommend checking out Lily Chai Tea, they have a lot of creative blends as well as unblended teas, and the staff are helpful and not pushy at all.
Preparation
After trying Verdant’s Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong recently, I wanted to revisit this one and compare. It stands out as almost the polar opposite on the spectrum of smoky teas. The smokiness here is much more mellow and soft, and taking a deep breath of the aroma is highly soothing. The flavor, though, is less smooth than the Xiao Zhong, with a “fuzziness” lent to it by the various roasty elements, and the finish is drier, but it is still quite enjoyable and has a lingering sweetness.
This tea in particular has me thinking about how much presentation affects perception. If I had ordered this through a prestige company, I might be trying to describe all the aromas I can find in it—woodsmoke, tobacco, vanilla cream. If it had been served in little ceramic cups in a dim sum restaurant, as similar teas often are, I might not have paid as much attention to it, or just concluded it was a pretty good crowd-pleaser. So it’s important to appreciate something on its own merits and not how much I might have paid for it…
A good one to start the day on. This blend has an intense coconut and almond fragrance. In the sachet I could see almost as much white stuff (shavings of the aforementioned coconut and almond) as tea leaves. Once brewed, the liquor is a deep brown color. The flavors are not as rich as one would expect from the scent, but that is a good thing—it’s fragrant without being overwhelming, and the black tea base itself is good, smooth and not astringent. Overall, it’s a nice cozy blended tea for a cool morning.
The sachets for this brand don’t have strings, which may be a little inconvenient for some, but makes for a nicer looking presentation.
Had this while out enjoying the beautiful weather today. It turned out to be one of the best coffeeshop iced teas I’ve tried. It has a clean, robust, fragrant flavor. There are no additives or other ingredients, and the tea has a natural, unmistakeable fruity sweetness somewhere between peach and muscat, with a touch of smokiness.
I think this is the same thing as Twig Tea by Choice Organic, which is already in the system. They must have recently changed the packaging, because it’s now sold as Twig Kukicha in stores.
This is a good, simple toasted tea. The toastiness is very much present in both the aroma and flavor, and there’s a touch of creaminess and toasted rice. The brew is rich without being strong. I’d call it the comfort food of teas.
I originally purchased this because I was curious about Lupicia’s kukicha, but wanted to try a budget version first to see if I liked this type of tea in general. It turned out to be highly enjoyable, but I’m not sure a down-to-earth, hard-to-get-wrong tea like this would be improved by coming from a fancier brand. So I might just stick with this one in the future.
This one is really something else.
If I had to rate a tea a perfect 100, it would be the first Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong I ever tried, several years ago. So when I ordered this batch of Xiao Zhong from Verdant Tea, I was afraid it wouldn’t live up to the expectations of that initial, nostalgic memory. I let it sit for a while, untested, and when I finally opened the package, I was admittedly a little shocked by the intensity of the smoky aroma. This wasn’t the beginner-friendly, soft smokiness of a Shui Xian, and nothing like the Xiao Zhong I had remembered either. It’s complex and earthy, almost animal, with a very strong scent of resin or wet, smoldering pine needles. It’s not something I’d want to inhale deeply, but it becomes more subtle after brewing.
Once brewed, this tea really shines. It’s light and smooth, very fragrant but with none of the punch of the dry leaf aroma, with a natural sweetness that becomes more evident with more sips. The sweetness is almost like fruit in syrup, but with no cloying sugariness. There is a lingering touch of the pine or evergreen essence as well. Overall, I think the real appeal of this tea is in the contrast between the intensity of the aroma, which is sharp, cool, and startling, and the subtlety of the flavor, which is warm and almost too harmonious to be believed. It’s not similar to that mythical first Xiao Zhong, but it is unique and unlike anything else I’ve tried.
