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Mastress Alita drank Sakura & Berry by Lupicia

1262 tasting notes

Happy World Milk Day! Today the prompt is “add a milk (non-dairy is fine!) to a tea.”

This is my final tea from Lupicia’s sakura line-up all the way back in 2018, when they still had a US base in California. I also like it much more than the other Lupicia sakura offerings, which waned too salty/salinic in flavor for my personal tastes due to the salt-preserves Lupicia uses on the sakura leaf. This tea, which has added strawberry flavoring, comes off sweeter and fruitier and I don’t taste the salt. I get a strawberry and sakura mochi feel, which is very pleasant! It’s probably the one sakura tea from Lupicia I’d happily restock sometime.

The only downside to it is that the base is a CTC that wanes on the strong/brisk/overly tannic side. I use a shorter steep for my black teas in general (3 minutes) and even with that, it is almost too bitey for me. I drank their other sakura teas as lattes just to combat the saltiness with the sweeter milk, but I thought this one would do well as a latte too, just because of the strength of the black base.

I prepared 12 oz. of tea to 4 oz. of vanilla almond milk (my favorite kind of non-milk to use because of its natural sweetness/creaminess and it froths nicely in my milk warmer/frother). I used extra leaf for the tea to accomodate the milk, but kept my steep to three minutes. I can still taste a bready/leafy quality from the base, but the milk does help temper that astringent bite at the end of the sip, and the strawberry and sakura flavors are still present and tasty, and perhaps even a bit more candy-like with the addition of the creamy vanilla-flavored milk.

A very satisfying latte!

Flavors: Astringent, Bread, Cocoa, Floral, Malt, Sakura, Strawberry, Sweet, Tannin

Preparation

205 °F / 96 °C 3 min, 0 sec 2 tsp 16 OZ / 473 ML

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Tiffany :)
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I love reading your tasting notes Mastress Alita :)

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Tiffany :)
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I love reading your tasting notes Mastress Alita :)

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Bio

Hi! I’m Sara, a middle-aged librarian living in southern Idaho, USA. I’m a big ol’ sci-fi/fantasy/anime geek that loves fandom conventions, coloring books, simulation computer games, Japanese culture, and cats. Proud genderqueer asexual (she/they) and supporter of the LGBTQ+ community. I’m also a chronic migraineur. As a surprise to no one, I’m a helpless tea addict with a tea collecting and hoarding problem! (It still baffles me how much tea I can cram into my little condo!) I enjoy trying all sorts of teas… for me tea is a neverending journey!

Favorite Flavors:

I love sampling a wide variety of teas! For me the variety is what makes the hobby of tea sampling so fun! While I enjoy trying all different types of teas (pure teas, blends, tisanes), these are some flavors/ingredients I enjoy:
-Dessert/chocolate/vanilla/caramel/cream/toffee/maple
-Sweet/licorice root/stevia
-Vegetal/grassy
-Floral/lavender/rose
-Spices/chais
-Fruity
-Tropical/pineapple/coconut
-Bergamot (in moderation)
-Roasted/nutty
-Tart/tangy/hibiscus/rosehip

Disliked Flavors:

There are not many flavors or ingredients that I don’t like. These include:
-Bananas/banana flavoring
-Hemp/CBD teas
-Smoke-scented teas/heavy smoke flavors (migraine trigger)
-Perfumey teas/extremely heavy floral aromas (migraine trigger)
-Gingko biloba (migraine trigger)
-Chamomile (used in blends as a background note/paired with stronger flavors is okay)
-Extremely spicy/heated teas
-Medicinal flavors/Ginseng
-Metallic flavors
-Overly strong artificial flavorings

With the exception of bananas and migraine triggers, I’ll pretty much try any tea at least once!

Steeping Parameters:

I drink tea in a variety of ways! For hot brews, I mostly drink my teas brewed in the western style without additions, and for iced tea, I drink teas mostly brewed in the cold brew style without additions. Occassionally I’ll change that up. I use the https://octea.ndim.space/#/ app for water-to-tea ratios and use steep times to my preferences.

My Rating Scale:

90-100 – Top tier tea! These teas are among my personal favorites, and typically I like to keep them stocked in my cupboards at all times, if possible!

70-89 – These are teas that I personally found very enjoyable, but I may or may not feel inclined to keep them in stock.

50-69 – Teas that fall in this range I enjoyed, but found either average, lacking in some way, or I’ve had a similar tea that “did it better.”

21-49 – Teas in this range I didn’t enjoy, for one reason or another. I may or may not finish them off, depending on their ranking, and feel no inclination to restock them.

20-1 – Blech! My Tea Hall of Shame. These are the teas that most likely saw the bottom of my garbage can, because I’d feel guilty to pass them onto someone else.

Note that I only journal a tea once, not every time I drink a cup of it. If my opinion of a tea drastically changes since my original review, I will journal the tea again with an updated opinion and change my rating. Occassionally I revisit a tea I’ve reviewed before after a year or more has passed.

Inventory:

My Cupboard on Steepster reflects teas that I have sampled and logged for review, and is not used as an inventory for teas I currently own at the present moment. An accurate and up-to-date listing of my current tea inventory can be viewed here: https://tinyurl.com/xjt9ptx3 . I am open to tea trades (within the United States only!) at this time. Note that I will not trade teas that I currently have in a quantity less than 50g (samplers, 1oz packages, etc.) or any teas that are currently still sealed/unopened in my cupboard.

Contact Info:

Feel free to send me a Steepster PM, or alternatively, check the website URL section below; it goes to a contact form that will reach my personal e-mail.

Location

Idaho, United States

Website

https://teatimetuesdayreviews...

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