I’ve actually been making good progress with my Lupicia tea samples – probably because I’ve started drinking it in the office and forgetting about the photos. So here’s the first ever text-only review of 4 Lupicia teas.

Jiyugaoka Earl Grey:This was described as an Earl Grey with yuzu. I thought I could smell the yuzu but I mostly got the bergamot note when drinking it. A rather ordinary Earl Grey apart from the yuzu scent and it’s not quite to my taste (since I’m not a huge fan of Earl Grey).

Salut: This was a rooibos with citrus and chamomile. As expected, there is a very, very strong lemon scent to the brewed tea. Unexpectedly, the taste of the tea was quite different – the rooibos notes come through very strongly and the citrus is a lot more subtle than what the scent signalled. This wasn’t as sweet or tart as I expected from the scent. I think I also got a bit of an earthy chamomile note but I might be mistaken. Overall, this felt more like a lemon rooibos.

Hirumo Biraki: So I get my tea from the friend who’s helping pruchase it and she writes these small descriptions on the packet. For this one, it just said “green tea”. The green tea leaves look like kamairi/pan-fried tea rather than steamed, since they are slightly curly. The dry leaves Ismell of grape and I can see candy bits inside. The tea smelled a bit savoury while brewing and tasted quite sweet. The dominant note was grape, but also a “thick” texture from the green tea. Surprisingly, the green tea notes were pretty distinctive here.

Jewellery box: This was described as a black tea with raspberry and white chocolate. I’m not a huge fan of chocolate-flavoured teas so I was a bit apprehensive about this. The dry leaves smelled like chocolate in a good way and the brewed tea smelled like chocolate with a hint of raspberry. In terms of taste, this was mostly a chocolate tea, I didn’t really taste the raspberry. For some reason, the second time I had this tea, I tasted some coconut as well. Overall, this was not my favourite.

Not going to lie, I kind of miss having pictures in my post! So you can expect some in the next quick tea review.