Over the past few years, I'd vaguely heard about something called "bubble tea." Not being much of a tea drinker (I only drink the very occasional flavored ice tea), I didn't pay much attention to it. But, a couple of months ago I saw some for sale at my local grocery, so I picked up a couple. I bought two offerings from the Joyba line--their blueberry pomegranate black tea and their cherry hibiscus tea.
The official Joyba website was yet another one of those very limited, brief ones, with no information about the founders, or the company history. It was basically just a product list. Aside from the two I tried, alternate flavors include strawberry rose, strawberry lemonade, mango passion fruit, raspberry dragon fruit, and sweet peach honeysuckle. Some of these are available in both black and green tea kinds. Other than that, about the only tidbits I learned were that the bubbles, or boba, are made from a soft seaweed extract called alginate, and that Joyba supports LGBTQ+ rights. However, I then learned from other sources that Joyba is a brand owned by the massive Del Monte company. There also wasn't much about Del Monte's history online. It started in 1886, when unnamed people used the name of a famous hotel in California's Monterrey Peninsula to sell coffee. By 1892 this new company started selling canned peaches as well. Over the next century Del Monte began selling many other kinds of canned foods, as well as both buying up other brands and being bought up by other companies themselves. In 1972 it reportedly did become the first food processor company to voluntarily include nutritional information on their product labels. Aside from Joyba, Del Monte also owns brands such as S&W, Contradina, Take Root, and Quick 'n'Easy.
But, you may be asking, what exactly is bubble tea? Well, this time the creation is pretty well known. No one disputes that it was developed in Taiwan in the 1980's. There are two competing origin stories. In the first, it was invented in the Chun Shui Tang tea room in Taichung, which was owned by Liu Han-Chieh. The business's product development manager, a woman named Lin Hsiu Hui, allegedly poured some tapioca balls into some tea during a staff meeting in 1988, drank it, and encouraged others to do the same. The results were so pleasing that the tea room started selling this new drink to customers. Alternately, the Hanlin Tea Room in Tainan claims it invented the drink in 1986. Owner Tu Tsong-he said he'd been inspired by the white tapioca he saw at the local market. This version was named "pearl tea." Whoever first created it, bubble tea exploded in popularity. It spread throughout Hong Kong, China, Japan, Vietnam, and Singapore, and then throughout much of the rest of the world. There are many varieties of bubble tea. Some use green tea, some black, some oolong. Sometimes milk is added, and sometimes not. All sorts of different fruit flavors are added as well. The bubbles can be made from several different sources, too, although most modern ones are made from tapioca. And, there is a range of bubble or ball shapes--round, pea-sized ones seem like the most common, but some are cubes, rectangles, or even stars. Some people even add milk or cheese foam on the top. The latter supposedly adds an interesting saltiness to the sweet tea flavor. However it's made, and flavored, bubble tea is almost always served cold. Which, as someone how eschews hot beverages, I fully support.
Joyba bubble tea, blueberry pomegranate black tea flavor: Had a red-purplish color. Fruity odor. Tastes like iced tea, I guess. Or alright. The bubbles had accumulated at the bottom. They were soft, and slightly chewy, without much taste of their own. I suppose they were kind of fun to pop in your mouth. So I guess the bubbles did add a little something to an otherwise regular iced tea. Therefore, if you like iced tea I'll give this a slight recommend.
Joyba bubble tea, cherry hibiscus tea flavor: Reddish-brown in color, cherry-ish odor. Decent taste--again cherry-ish, not surprisingly. Once again, the bubbles were at the bottom, and they had the same texture and lack of taste as in the previous tea. Oddly, this tea was listed as being a "Product of Mexico," while the other one was apparently made in the home factory of Walnut Creek, CA. As with the other one this tea was okay, and if you're a fan of iced tea you'll presumably enjoy this as well.
I looked it up, and the Chun Shui Tang tea room (one of the two possible origins of bubble tea) is still in business. I was especially intrigued by one of its menu items. In addition to dozens of sorts of bubble teas, they also serve some food. Including something called pig's blood cake, which appears to be really made from pig's blood, ala the blood pudding made in the U.K. It sounds revolting, but in a possibly cool way.
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