HEYTEA King Jasmine Guava

The HEYTEA King Jasmine Guava is $10.49 and 275 calories. Nine-scented King jasmine tea with red guava, milk and a guava cloud on top, and one of two drinks HEYTEA runs as seasonal rather than as a permanent line.

The nine in nine-scented is a count of scenting rounds. Fresh jasmine blossom is layered with the tea leaf, left overnight so the leaf absorbs the perfume, then the spent flowers are removed and replaced with fresh ones. Nine rounds of that is slow and expensive, and it is the reason this tea is called King rather than simply jasmine.

Red guava is the fruit half. It is sweeter and softer than the white variety, with a pink flesh that gives the drink its colour without anything added, and a scent that sits close to jasmine already. The two were chosen to overlap rather than to contrast.

Milk is what makes this unusual for a fruit drink. Most fruit tea on the HEYTEA board is fruit against tea with no dairy anywhere near it, because acid and milk separate. Guava is low enough in acid to take dairy without curdling, which opens a build that mango and grapefruit cannot support.

The guava cloud on top is the third layer of the same fruit. It is a cheese cloud with guava through it, so the cap is savoury-sweet where the drink underneath is fruity, and the salt in it stops the whole cup reading as dessert.

Numbers come in at 27g of sugar, 12g of fat and 5g of protein for 275 calories. Most of the sugar is fruit rather than syrup, and half sugar works well here because the guava carries the drink on its own.

Seasonal means it goes. HEYTEA rotates this range and there is no published schedule, so a store that had it last month may not have it this week. The full menu page tracks what is on the board.

Drink it fresh. The cloud folds in within ten minutes and the fruit pulp settles to the bottom, so a cup left on a desk is a different drink from the one handed over the counter.

For jasmine tea without the fruit, the Cloud Jasmine Tea (Original) is $7.49. For the other seasonal, the Oat Mango Boom is $10.49.