Momijigari

This tea is the best wine tasting tea I have ever had – and its not even touted as a wine flavored tea! What the?
I love it – apples and apricot and fallen autumn leaves? YES MORE PLEASE!
Tastes like the holidays!

Backlog:

This tea is very autumnal to me. I taste apple and apricot – two flavors that make me think of late summer and early autumn, and the wine like notes work very well with these flavors. Hints of a rustic smoke-like tone.

The black tea is earthy and warm … and it complements the other flavors very well. A really enjoyable medley of flavors in one cup with this tea.

Sipdown, so sad. It lasted until March, but barely! Juicy as usual, really refreshing. I love this stuff (though I have to move it down a peg or two since I’ve spent some time refining my score criteria…it’s just so dang subjective).

A tea that tastes really “Lupicia” – Lupicia always creates lovely scented teas! I enjoy the potent apple flavour and the fragrance of apricot. They don’t taste as artificial as in some cheap teas. Though there’s a slight bitterness in the tea that leads me to lower the rating a bit. Someone says the bitterness is due to the addition of autumn leaves and I think it may be true! But anyway the idea of using momiji to create an autumn tea is very interesting… a good try!

“Momijigari” is the Japanese word for going out to look at the changing autumn leaves. The smell of this tea in the shop made me want to try it right away. The combination of apple and apricot in the dry leaf creates a honey-like note for me, and indeed if I had to say which colour this tea evokes for me, it’s definitely that red-gold of autumn leaves.

When brewed (nice and dark), there’s a slight bitter or smokey smell, which may be due to how there really are autumn leaves mixed into the tea. Both with and without milk, this is really delicious, with a good balance between juicy fruit and black tea flavours. Overall, a creative idea, very well-executed by Lupicia. I have a feeling this would be delicious iced.

Another from Cameron B!  Thanks again!  Lupicia never fails — the scent of the leaf here was very faint, but of course steeping it, the Lupicia magic happens and it’s full red apple!  Also a hint of champagne.  So good.  (And of course, Lupicia also has a fantastic GREEN apple flavor…)

March Sipdown Prompt – a pie flavored tea for Pi Day!

Happy Pi Day! Happy birthday to Albert Einstein! And happy birthday to me!

Once again I thought I had run into a prompt I couldn’t fulfill. I don’t have any tea with pie in the name, but I could use something that would be the flavor of pie. That left me mainly with apple or chocolate, and we have a chocolate prompt coming up in two weeks so I went with apple.

As a kid, I didn’t like pie. My mom loved it. The only pie I ate was apple pie, warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Now I like lots of different types of pie, but I will honor my childhood favorite today.

This tea is amazing apple apple apple. But the apricot keeps it from being tart and overly bright as it adds a nice deeper note to the profile. Even though the base is Indian tea, which can be so strong as to upset my very delicate stomach, this tea gives me no gastric distress.

This is classic Lupicia blending at its finest. I usually steep my tea leaves and then immediately resteep and mix the two together for economy. Instead of one strong and one weaker cup, you get a medium mix.

Although I did that once with this tea, I will not do it again. This tea is too perfect just as it is, and to lessen its beauty would be anathema.

As a musician, I love the fact that Albert Einstein was once asked by a woman at a lecture, “Can you explain the theory of relativity to me?” To which he replied, “No, but I can play it for you on the violin.” (He was a very good musician and his cousin Albert was a famous and lauded music theorist.)

Happy Pi Day to all!

Sipdown (247)

Another tea from Cameron B. Thank you so much for sharing!

I was worried this would have the same issue was the Tochiotome Black that I drank yesterday. Namely the very distracting brassiness of the base tea. While there is a slight brassiness here, either I started drinking this while it was hotter and it hasn’t come through yet or this tea doesn’t have as much of an issue with that metallic quality. Either way, yay!

No overwhelming brassiness means I can try the actual flavors of this tea and they are quite nice. The apple jumped out at me immediately. It is not a dried apple flavor though. More like a slightly tart concentrated apple flavor…like a fresh pressed granny apple juice. I get slight apricot in the aftertaste, a lingering flavor that just sort of sits on the tip of your tongue. Also a little bit of a leafy vibe which makes sense given the autumn inspirations for this blend.

All in all, it is a nice tea. I don’t think it is a favorite b/c while the flavors are lovely, they are not ones I reach for often. Plus, the more I drink, the more of that brassiness comes through. I think I just don’t get along with Lupicia’s fruity black teas. I got the book of teas from them a couple years back and I don’t recall really loving any of their fruity blacks b/c of the base. Nevertheless, I am grateful to Cameron B for the opportunity to try something new!

Another sample from Cameron B. :D

The dry leaves smelled like apple cider. I don’t drink wine but it reminds me of the smell of certain wines from Olive Garden hehe. I love the smell of some wines, I just can’t drink it without nausea. Long story, I’ll share it sometime.

I can drink this though. :D I found it to be refreshing. I bet this would be good iced. When it comes to fruit, I love the ones that are tart so momijigari goes in the win column for me since it has some tart notes. Sweet and tart apple, some apricot notes with the comforting malt notes. I like the black tea base in this. Is it darjeeling? I’m such a noob.

So after browsing the Lupicia site earlier (for no good reason, I might add), I figured I would steep up a cup of this, one of my favorites of theirs. It’s a seasonal tea and it’s available right now, so I thought it would be a good idea to see how it’s aged so I can restock it if needed.

Luckily, this is still perfectly scrumptious. I love this tea, it has such a bright and crisp apple flavor, which is a nice contrast to the usual sweet apple & cinnamon combination that is much more common. There’s such a lovely zing to the apple here, yet it doesn’t quite reach Jolly Rancher candy status. It’s more like a tart hard apple cider. The apricot is very subtle, although this could be because the tea is older. I do taste little hints of stonefruit, and there’s a bit of a floral note, especially in the aftertaste.

The base tea is their usual somewhat brisk offering, but I like its slight sharpness next to the apple, I think they complement each other well. There’s also a dry autumn leaf flavor that gives a nice earthy base to the bright flavors.

I couldn’t ask for a more autumnal tea. Now, please excuse me while I sigh contentedly…