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New tea tasting!

Testing out teas from Lupicia, still working on the trying or sipping down all the samples from Cameron, Skysamurai and a tea book from an importer. With my sensitivity to large amounts of caffeinated tea right now, I am down to 1-2 cups of caffeinated tea a day and sipping down is so slow for actual tea. :’(

Preparation: Western
Tasting Note:
Ah! Yum! I can actually taste the melon flavor in this oolong. I was worried all the Lupicia oolongs were going to smell nice but just taste like a normal taiwanese oolong. (I have my preferences for straight Taiwanese oolongs already so, if it’s going to claim to be flavored, I want to be able to tell it’s there.) The melon flavor tastes a lot like honeydew but sometimes the “mustiness” of the oolong makes me think it is closer to a really ripe cantalope. It is a super great combination and I appreciate that the candy gives a little sweetness as well. I would definitely try to make this as a cold brew too. It seems like it would be AMAZING in the summer. In fact, there is a -15 F windchill (actual temp of 0 F) outside right now and I am still in my memories of summer with this tea right now. :)

Total side note on the Lupicia Japan order: To follow up with my previous posting about making a Lupicia Japan order with a forwarding address generated by tenso.com. It all worked fabulously, the shipping total only took 9 days to get from Japan to Minnesota, which is really impressive to me. Now to the important bit, I bought 19 teas (roughly 50g each and 12 of the 19 were in specialty tins so this was a little more expensive than buying just tea) and it totaled to $183.70 (usd). Breakdown was $134.88 usd for the Lupicia (free local shipping after a 6200 yen purchase, which is roughly $47.64 usd) and an additional $48.82 usd for tenso.com’s international shipping fee (no coupons used). I bought the second cheapest shipping choice through DHL which was only like 4 dollars more to potentially save me a 100 days wait. Other than that the instructions in tenso’s emails and faqs were clear enough to help me fill out the japanese address on Lupicia and fill out tenso’s consolidation form (its a digital customs form mainly and took me 3 minutes to fill out). All in all, Japan is actually cheaper than Hawaii if you take into account the conversion rate and free local shipping. I am looking at both sites right now. If you buy (hypothetically speaking) 19 Cookie teas (50g ea) in Japan it is $109.48 with another roughly $50 dollars for shipping through tenso and that is $159.48. If you buy 19 Cookie teas in the Hawaii site it is $180.50 with free shipping and not including taxes. Oddly enough for large orders (not sure about small orders yet) right now, ordering direct through japan is cheaper and pretty dang fast, plus you get ALL the tea choices in Japan (except for other country exclusives).