Every time I pick this up again, I’m all like, ‘I know I rated this a solid 95, but seriously, how good can it be?’ and then I smell it and I’m all, ‘Oh, right, it’s this one.’ and then I steep it and drink it and it’s just so insanely good. The florals are complex and beautifully balanced without ever becoming overpowering or cloying.

I stumbled over a tasting note by a user who’d mostly been reviewing Lupicia teas – it said that the biggest problem with Lupicia was that they recommend boiling water for all their teas… and that any true tea drinker (whatever that is) would know this to be incorrect.

Since so many of my followers find me through my Lupicia tasting notes, and since so many people ask me about Lupicia because I am, obviously, the undisputed #1 Lupicia fangirl (Those pesky Canadians are catching up, though, I have to watch that.), I feel I have to stress this again, because it keeps coming up.

The biggest problem with Lupicia is not the above. It is that prejudiced tea drinkers insist on either ignoring Lupicia’s steeping instructions and hence, in many cases, get a lesser result and/or question Lupicia’s know-how due to these steeping instructions to the extent that many avoid the company altogether.

(Also that their teas are delicious, irresistible and will eventually ruin you, because once you’re hooked, you’re hooked.)

Numerous unnamed tea-litist people have approached me and told me they definitely aren’t going to drink sub-par Lupicia teas because a company that suggests boiling water for a green tea is surely run by amateurs and why am I so excited about their teas since I clearly don’t approve of Teavana and their ilk? (This is particularly hilarious, seeing as Lupicia are Japanese, not American, as most of these people have assumed.)

So no – Lupicia know what they’re doing. Strangely, so do A.C. Perchs when they recommend 11-minute steeping times for some of their teas. And those teas were weird, yet tasty experiences I wouldn’t have had if I’d stubbornly insisted on misguided tea snobbery.

As for the above user, I challenged her to try temporarily dropping that whole all green teas are the same prejudice and to following the steeping instructions, just to see what it was like. (Let’s hope for squees of delight rather than hate mail.)

To sum this up – Bravissimo! is one insanely tasty tea, especially steeped for 1.5 minutes in boiling water.

Boiling.