Tea: Aloalo - 5904- EH-4Vendor: Lupicia USA (Hawaii Exclusive)
Vendor Description: A Darjeeling and Assam tea with hibiscus flower. Tea has a beautiful red color.
About This Tea: This tea is one of the Lupicia Hawaii Exclusive teas. There are a handful of teas that are only available at the Hawaii store of Lupicia. A few have started popping up as a limited time item on their website and a few retail locations. This is not one of those.
Leaf: The leaf for this tea has a lovely color mix to it. It is a rainbow mixture of red, black, green, and brown hues. It has a very sweet and floral aroma to it. There is a very prominent factor to the aroma which I'm guessing is the hibiscus component. I'm not particularly familiar with the aroma of hibiscus.
1st Infusion Parameters: 3g, 5oz, 208F, 5min
1st Infusion: The tea has a very unusual dark purple hue to it, the shade reminds me somewhat of a deep red wine. The Darjeeling component is definitely poking through in the aroma expressing that characteristic floral Darjeeling aroma. The rest of the aroma is very thick and hearty. The flavor of the tea itself has a certain tartness to it. It is very up front and short lived. It reminds me somewhat of cranberry juice, the tartness and snap of the flavor. It just isn't backed by the same sweetness as a glass of cranberry juice. There is a light astringency tailing on the aftertaste after the tartness.Rating: 9/10
Conclusion: This is a very unusual tea. I believe that a lot of the uniqueness is due to the hibiscus component, but the overall picture of the tea is a light and refreshing beverage. It is unfortunate that this tea is only available at the Hawaii store. The flavor brings back memories of the Island Breeze tea from Mighty Leaf, which also had hibiscus in it. In comparison this is a richer tea experience and bolder and more flavorful. Thank you to Victoria and her SIL at TeaChat for providing me some of this wonderful tea.
2 comments:
One of my favourite herbal teas is hibiscus. Have you tried pure hisbiscus? It seems to me that you would like it!
I really didn't like Alo Alo as a hot tea. It tasted like the herbal part of the tea "cooked" at the 208+ F necessary to brew black tea (boiling, per the instructions).
To me, it was undrinkable brewed hot.
However, Alo Alo made an excellent ice tea. I was quite surprised. Apparently, the herbal portion of the tea doesn't "cook" when brewed cold, so it didn't have that sour/acrid taste.
I used the Lupicia Original Handy Cooler, cold water, ice & sugar. I put celophane wrap over the top to keep any other food odor from getting into the tea. Left it in the refrigerator overnight. On top of everything else, the deep red color is a nice change of pace for ice tea.
You should try Alo Alo as an ice tea. I think you would enjoy it.
If I wanted ice tea, and didn't want to try something new, I wouldn't feel bad buying Alo Alo again.
Peace.
Post a Comment