Piccolo

This smells awesome – very strong berry aroma with faint notes of honey. It has a very sweet smell, almost like a berry candy. As it brews, it smells a bit like wine.

When it is hot, I can taste berry, faint notes of honey and very faint nutty flavor from the rooibos. As it begins to cool, the honey flavor intensifies and more of that woody taste from the rooibos comes out. I can also taste a bit of apple in the background.

Overall, a decent tasting rooibos. Not my favorite blend, but certainly not the worst I’ve ever tried either. Nice.

I don’t think I like rooibos tea, at least not the red kind.

It reminds me of cough medicine I took as a child. But that could be the apricot. Hmm, no way to tell until I try another rooibos variety.

The tea has a slightly cool, refreshing aftertaste. It’s definitely weird. But I just can’t get over that medicine taste. I hate to do this, but this one’s going down the drain. :(

It’s been awhile since I’ve enjoyed a cup of this tea. I still have a tin. I absolutely love Lupicia’s rooibos. It’s not overpowering, and they do the flavoring just right. With my last visit to the store on Friday, the saleswomen tossed in one of the mini holiday tins of this tea “as a gift.” So sweet! The tin had five sachets, which are so convenient to brew in the cute leaf-print double-walled glass cup I also bought! The color of this tea is gorgeous in that cup! I’m tasting honey and berries. Love it!

This is a nice tea. I have been sick for the past few days now, so my sense of smell is bad. But this is nice and fruity. Soothing and not bitter and not tart

This surprised me with how good it was. I made a whole pot so what I had left was gone. I might consider getting more if I can find it, but I’m not chasing down more Roobios when its such an iffy drinker for me.

This is pretty good for what it is. I’m not the biggest fan of red rooibos – I don’t like it plain at all, although I do sometimes enjoy it in blends. The rooibos here is present, but not to the point of being off-putting (to me, at least). The fruit flavoring is rather sweet and quite strong, if a bit on the artificial side – I say fruit, rather than berry and/or apricot, because, as with several other Lupicia blends I’ve tried, it’s more of a generic fruit candy flavor than anything else. I’m especially reminded of Neptune here, which struck me as, essentially, Piccolo with a black base rather than a rooibos one. It’s a bit sweeter than I’d like.

I’m enjoying this one in the evenings. It’s not outstanding, but then there aren’t a ton of caffeine-free blends that I really love drinking. I’m giving this a slightly higher score than I’d give a comparable caffeinated tea (see Neptune) just for adding some variety to my nighttime repertoire.

Piccolo is marketed as a children’s tea by Lupicia because it’s caffeine-free. I do think children will like it because it is bursting with berry flavours! The rooibos base is very sweet with a hint of nuts, and most importantly it has no weird straw-y flavour. This overall tastes more like fruit juice (with artificial flavouring, which the kids love :P) than tea.

I’m discovering I’m not a roobios fan I think. Fortunately this was a sample with my order. Didn’t like and couldn’t finish.

I have to start off saying I am not a fan of red rooibos and have yet to find one I truly enjoy- except for Gryphon Apple Strudel, which is very hard to get hands on now that I’m living outside Singapore.

Piccolo has a weird medicinal fruit cordial note in it, like some unholy alliance of stonefruit marmalade and cough syrup distilled into some sort of wretched jam. Lupicia claims it has a “lovely scent and flavors of honey, apricot, and sweet berries,” but I am not detecting any of those flavours except the apricot which at least serves to mask the rooibos note somewhat. They further go on to recommend it for children (apparently ones you don’t much like) and adding milk. I am a child-free vegan, so into the trash Piccolo must go.

I can’t blame Lupicia for my personal tastes and this does seem to be a nice quality rooibos- it’s just got that prominent red rooibos note that personally overrides any other good qualities. It does brew up to a lovely colour and seems like it’d be good for multiple steeps, if you’re into that sort of self-flagellation.

Fun to find some Lupicia in the last TTB! I don’t always love Lupicia’s rooibos, but I’m happy to say that this one was pretty good! The rooibos is smooth, and I can taste the pretty authentic apricot on top of that. It wasn’t juicy…maybe more like a dried apricot vibe? It was decent cold, but I accidentally left it on the counter all night, and I think this temperature is the most complementary to the flavors.