Can you believe that Chinese New Year is almost here? I can’t, because I haven’t even come close to finishing the Year of the Chicken tea that I bought last year. So in the spirit of “let me do this while we’re still in the year of the chicken”, here’s my review of Lupicia’s Year of the Chicken tea.

I made an effort for this photo

There are basically two types of teas. A green tea (white chicken) and a flavoured tea (brown/black chicken). Let’s start with the green tea:

This green tea is called 鶏賀新年 (ケイガンシンネン・keigashinnen) and it’s a sencha mixed with matcha. Both the sencha and matcha are produced in Japan, and to make things special, they added gold flakes. The recommended brewing method for one cup of tea (150ml) is 4-5 grams of tea at 75-80 degree water with a brewing time of 45 second to 1 minute.

I tried to take a photo but as you can clearly see, the gold flakes do not photograph well. But in real life, they look really pretty.

The tea leaves were soft to touch, although that’s probably because of the matcha powder. The tea was very fragrant, although the smell of the leaves was stronger than the smell of the tea. Taste-wise, it resembles the 深緑 tea from お茶の山口園 but the added matcha makes it slightly bitter in a good way. Reactions to the tea included:

– “Very fragrant” (很香)
– “Very bitter”
– “Goes well with chips”

Personally, I think this would be a good cup of tea to go with food.

The other tea is a flavoured black tea and it’s called 幸鶏好好 (コケコッコー・kokekokkoo). The ingredients are tea from India and Vietnam, blue mallow, marigold, and fragrance. I’m guessing the fragrance is grape because that’s what I smelled the minute I opened the packet [1]. The recommended brewing method for 1 cup of tea (150ml) is 2.5-3 grams of hot water (no specific temperature given) for 2 to 2.5 minutes.

This tea was a lot more popular than the green tea. It tastes exactly like a muscat tea and everybody loved it. They praised the fragrance and the taste and I didn’t hear one bad word about it. Well, I did hear that the tea tastes weaker (and hence not as nice) when I added more hot water to the pot, but that can be remedied if you only use the tea leaves once.

It’s times like this when I really miss living in Japan, where there was easy access to a Lupicia store (and my Lupicia membership with the monthly magazine and teas to try). But this is besides the point so here’s wishing you a happy Chinese New Year!

Note
[1] Also, the tea leaves were coarser to touch. I couldn’t find a good place to put it in the main text, but I wanted to add it in because I have it for the other tea so footnote it is.