New Tasting Notes
I think this is part of the newer line of chais that may end up replacing my precious rose chai. For my first try, I made it with a three minute steep and generous (for me) quantity of almond milk. (As with the rose chai, I made sure to eat first because the base for both of these is an Indian Assam and those have a tendency to hurt my stomach.) I found it surprisingly rich – sweet and flavorful without being overpowering. I don’t like things to be too sweet and grew up drinking 1% milk though, so YMMV! I suspect this will be downright indulgent with oat milk. It’s pretty creamy even with the almond milk, which makes me think that some of the creaminess is coming from the blend itself – almond milk is just relatively thin for what I’m picking up. There’s also caramel sweetness, some maltiness from the base, a whiff of salt, and maybe vanilla? Not sure about that last one, I might be imagining it. I just love the rose so much that it’s hard for me to find anything dessert-y to be an adequate substitute/replacement, but this is definitely a worthy addition to the Passover tea lineup.
It’s not Passover for me without this tea! They’ve come out with a new line of chai blends so I’m a little concerned that they will discontinue this one, but that’s future Kaylee’s problem. I had a cup of this with a touch of honey and almond milk. It’s such a comfort tea for me at this point. The rose and cinnamon are a great combo, and it’s strongly floral while staying just this side of pleasant rather than perfume-y.
I’m sipping this one down as a cold brew. The green tea and matcha come across as rather bitter, but in a delightful way. The chestnut flavor is friendly and bright! Chestnuts are an autumn flavor, and I’m pretty sure I picked this up in autumn just before Lupicia closed their San Jose and other continental US locations, which is very sad. But I’m not one for sticking to seasons. I’ll eat soumen “summer” noodles or ice cream in the winter, and hot chili in the summer. Anyway, this is delicious, and I wish I could easily buy more.
Flavors: Astringent, Bitter, Candy, Chestnut, Grass, Vegetal
Preparation
I don’t participate in Sips By but it seems that this is where the sample came from. After looking around it appears this company no longer exists. Might have been a covid knock out. Building and maintaining a business is hard work. So if you find someone you like support them.
Anyway. I’m not a fan of this tea. Theoretically it sounds pretty pleasant but the mixture of green tea and some of the ingredients was off in my opinion. Kinda tastes like some of those dryer sheets that have a lot of crap in them in the laundry aisle.
This is the other new sparkling iced tea that I picked up in my last local grocery haul.
Honestly, it way exceeded my expectations. Similar to the other flavour from Flirt, this had a really great balance between the notes of peach and the black tea base. The peach tasted like fresh peach juice with both a bright and tangy element but also a sweetness to round it out. Not artificial at all, and such a playful and dynamic note with the effervescence. The black tea, like I said in my Lime & Lemon review, strikes a nice balance between something like a Brisk/Nestea and a higher end specialty loose leaf black.
It just tasted like exactly what you want on a hot summer afternoon. Really refreshing, well balanced acidity and sweetness, and just authentic on every level. I will definitely be buying this one again – having that no step sparkling iced tea is so convenient. It might actually replace the sparking Blackberry Lemonade (non tea related) that I often get from Flirt…
Sipdown
This was such a mild sheng! I did a rinse and it was still so tightly formed that I did a second rinse and let it bask in the steam for a bit. The first steep was very mild, and my neighbor who was trying puerh for the first time said it was a bit weak for him. I let the second steep go longer and he liked that better, and the third steep still longer and stronger, and he really liked that. He said the initial aroma reminded him of suntan lotion that had been applied much earlier but it wasn’t cocoa butter smell. He didn’t think it tasted the same as the aroma he was picking up.
He and his wife felt like they initially got asparagus flavor but they were frustrated to identify the familiar something that they couldn’t pin down, something that happens a lot when we first start drinking good tea and try to describe it. I told them the third steep onward seemed to me to have mineral flavor followed by menthol/minty/camphor and he said YES! That is the sunscreen part! They noticed how the menthol built up in ontensity the more the drank.
I gave them lots of samples to take home and sent the rest of this with them as well, so this is a sharedown!
So, Flirt is a local(ish) company that specializes in sparkling juice drinks and natural sodas. They’re a partner with the grocery delivery service I do weekly for local produce, prepped meals, baked goods and such – usually I get their Root Beer or their blackberry lemonade. However, last time I ordered I saw that they’d added two sparkling iced teas to their menu so I got those instead!!
I can’t decide if I liked this one or not. Honestly, there were a lot of things in the pros column. For starters, it taste distinctly of both lemon and lime and neither are particularly artificial or cloying or too tart/sour. Just nice and bright/lively. The lime is actually a little stronger than the lemon, which is refreshingly different too. They use black tea as the tea base, and you can actually taste the tea quite clearly and it’s not half bad either. Somewhere between being a Brisk or Nestea level of black tea and, like, a more specialty loose leaf tea that you might use if you were making Southern Sweet Tea by hand and wanted to avoid instant mixes/teabags.
Really the only con here was the aftertaste. Something about almost tasted like spearmint to me!? Flirt has a Mojito Lemonade that has a similar note in it, and I just kept thinking of that tea. It’s not that I disliked the mint note, but it was so out of place feeling that I ended up being a huge distraction from what I think could have otherwise been such a strong drink.
I always forget there’s peach flavouring in this right up until I take my first sip, and then I’m clearly reminded it’s there because this tea tastes really distinctly of an almost waxy floral peach note that I find kind of at odds with the red cherry flavour. It’s mostly the floral I think I dislike, but I can’t totally put my finger on why!? I don’t know. I still find this to be a really confusing tea, and given I have better cherry and better peach teas in my stash it’s one I think I’m gonna struggle a little to finish off even though it’s also not particularly a bad tea either…
My neighbor wants to drink green tea for the antioxidants but said he couldn’t find any green tea he liked at all. I assume they were buying grocery store green and when he helped us out with sod laying I gave him a cold shaken matcha for the hot afternoon work. He loved it and drinks it every morning now, shaken in the jar with ice just as I first gave it to him.
I told him and his wife that I would love to have them over to sample lots of teas and I was sure we could find one he would like. Since he loved matcha, I began with this Japanese green that had a lot of similar flavor notes and he loved it. He also loved puerh – the stronger the better whether sheng or shu – and Chinese greens, especially Anji Bai Cha from Teavivre.
They didn’t know the word umami yet, but began describing what they loved about the tea and I told them there was a word for it, so they know all about umami now. Teas that I shied away from until I was a seasoned tea drinker, they loved. We drank tea for four hours. I love tea padawans!
