LUPICIA: PICCOLO ROOIBOS REVIEW

This is another one of Lupicia's line of caffiene free flavored Rooibos tea. Today's tea is Piccolo, a rooibos with apricot and sweet honey. 

I am a huge tea fan, although maybe you can tell from all the tea notes in all the perfume I order, I just love everything about tea. 

If you've not heard of Lupicia before, they're a Japanese brand that sells mainly tea, and some other associated tea ware, such as cups, teapots, tea flavored biscuits, tea flavored honey, tea chocolates and strainers. 

They have branches in America, France, Taiwan and Australia, and even a store in Melbourne you can go to! Another thing they do is exclusive tea blends for each region they sell in, there are special Hokkaido blends you can only buy in Hokkaido, and similarly in Australia. 

Piccolo however, is part of their permanent and worldwide range, and is sold in tea bags (I bought a set of 10), or a 50g bag. As this is a caffeine free tea, so perfect at nighttime or for those who are caffeine sensitive! 

The official description for Piccolo from the Australian site: 

A caffeine free Rooibos tea, flavoured with apricot and sweet honey. This tea can also be enjoyed with milk.

The Japanese description however, describes it as :

Rooibos tea with sweet and gentle honey, berries and apricot. 

How long to steep the tea? The official bag says you can steep this from 2-3 minutes, but I feel that shis tea doesn't need to be steeped for very long. You can use anywhere from 80 to 100 celsius water for this and you can still get decent flavor out of it - and despite how long you steep it for it won't be too bitter either. 

The ingredients for the tea are: rooibos, marigold and 'flavor', which I would interpret to be some sort of artificial flavoring for the honey, berries and apricot, which probably explains the lighter taste of the ~fruit~. 

When you just smell the tea - the scent of the apricot and honey is relatively tame, it's more dried apricots with a sort of breakfast buffet honey scent. 

When you get to steeping the tea, the honey takes a backseat, and the apricot turns into a very subtle type of sweet fruit scent, more like dried sugary apricots, and smells sweeter than it actually tastes. The longer you steep for, and the higher the temperature of the water, the more the roobios will become stronger, so depending on what taste you like with your tea, I'd recommend either shorter times for a more fruity and sweet tea, or longer for a more refined rooibos taste. 

I like the tea a lot most when it's hot, which is when the rooibos shows off it's natural mellow and slightly sweet taste with just a touch of sweetened fruit, and that probably is because the fruit and honey are a result of flavoring rather than ingredients. 

When cold, the tea is still nice but the rooibos is not as rich and refreshing as it is when hot, most of the sweet flavors are muted (like how sodas are much sweeter when room temperature), but there's this lovely golden aftertaste of honey just at the back of your throat. 

Overall, the apricot and honey in this blend definitely feel more like an afterthought than a unique feature of the tea, but I think it's a good deviation from the typical rooibos if you're not a huge fan of fruit teas.