It’s Christmas Eve and I’m finally writing my Lupicia Christmas tea post. Unfortunately, while I’m in time for Christmas, this was the 2017 Tea Bag set, which means that I’m a year late for this. But better late then never! (Also, I couldn’t get a hold of the 2018 set because Lupicia no longer operates in Singapore, so this is the only Christmas tea set from them that I have).

To be honest, I was a bit surprised to find this while rummaging through my tea cupboard. If that’s not a sign that I have too much tea, I don’t know what is. (Still going to keep buying tea though – I’ll just have to think of ways to get more people to help me drink them!)

I always find Lupicia’s packaging, especially their tins, to be very pretty and this is no exception!

It’s not quite an advent calendar, but the cut outs are cute!

And the tins, of course.

Each tin contains 5 teabags, which is very convenient. It’s definitely not as economical as getting loose leaf tea, but I get lazy around the Christmas season so teabags suit me.

Carol

I’m quite sure that Lupicia re-issues the flavours because I’ve definitely heard of these before. And I’m pretty sure that I’ve enjoyed Carol, although I have no memory of what it tastes like. According to the insert in the tin, Carol is a strawberry and vanilla black tea accented with rose. It’s got a very soft and sweet fragrance and tastes like it too. The tea is sweet but also slightly astringent, which means that it goes very well with foods like tea cakes, scones, and clotted cream.

White Christmas

White Christmas is another black tea, this time inspired by baked sweets. It combines white chocolate and nuts, although I could only smell the chocolate. The tea liquor has a sweet, milky smell. Taste-wise, it’s not as chocolatey as Kittea’s Joy, but it does have nutty notes. It also reminds me of Lupicia’s Hokkaido milk tea, although I think I enjoy this more. My family tried this one, and although the flavoured tea they drink is normally the fruity type, they liked this.

Jingle Bells

Inspired by sparkling wine, this is a grape-flavoured black tea. And like the description says, this tea smells and tastes like grape. Unfortunately, the black tea isn’t very prominant here and it feels like the flavour of grape dominates.

Cache Cache

No idea how to pronounce this, since it’s a French word that means “hide-and-seek”. The Japanese pronunciation is something like “kashu kashu” which is no help. According to the description, this is a “cute” black tea with a lot of hidden flavours.

For some reason, the fragrance of the teabag reminds me of houjicha, although that went away after I brewed the tea. It’s definitely an interesting tea – it’s a bit sweet and has a taste that is familiar yet unfamiliar. I definitely wanted to drink this again because there seems to be a lot of things that you can find.

On my second try of this tea, I thought I tasted something fruity. I gave it to my family to drink and my mom mentioned that it reminded her of Yumchaa’s Blueberry Hill Tea. I definitely agree with that. She also mentioned that the aftertaste reminded her of ripe puer, but I didn’t really get that flavour.

This is definitely the most interesting tea out of the six, and I would actually want to buy more of this tea. Oh, and you’ll want to drink this tea hot; for some reason, it tastes a lot better hot than at room temperature. I definitely will not try cold-brewing this.

Soleil Levant

This tea is similar to Jingle Bells, since it’s a grape-flavour tea. Unlike Jingle Bells, the tea base is green tea, and there are citrus and matcha accents to the tea. It pretty much tastes like Jingle Bells, with the taste of grape lingering pleasantly in the mouth. The green tea base is also stronger than the black tea, and I thought it balanced nicely with the taste of the grape.

Thé Au Lait

Like its name suggests, Thé Au Lait is supposed to be enjoyed with milk. According to its description, it’s a full-bodied black tea that has a mellow sweetness to it.

This tea brews extremely quickly and it looked like coffee after less than a minute. When I tried it without milk, If found it to be very full-bodied and sweet, like its description. There was surprisingly little astringency or bitterness to it (a surprise given how dark the tea was) and it had a nice mouthfeel. When I added milk, I was happy to note that the taste of the tea held up and the sweetness remained. My dad loves having his tea with milk and I knew that this was the tea for him (and I was right).

Overall, I really enjoyed these six teas. Cache Cache and Thé Au Lait were my favourites because they were a little different from the other four flavoured teas, but I think that any tea lover would enjoy this. According to their online store, Carol, Cache Cache, Jingle Bells, and White Christmas are also appearing in this year’s teabag set of six. Of the remaining two flavours, La Belle Epoque sounds familiar – time to search my tea cupboard and see if I have it. Although it’s possible that I had it.