Credit: Anwar Hussein/Getty
Given my history of coffee consumption, this was surely the assignment I was born for.
Having received the financial backing of Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, and a glowing endorsement from Oprah Winfrey, could Clevr Blends organic instant oat milk "SuperLatte" live up to the hype – to say nothing of its price tag?
Coffee is something of a religion here in California, and fancy "wellness" coffee even more so. The state’s combination of ambient hippy culture and corporate affluence creates a ready audience for organic productivity drugs, which in pre-Covid times caused queues at the best-loved spots to wind round the block.
Clevr’s majority-female founders were once itinerant monks of a sort, travelling the Golden State brewing lattes in the back of a van. Now the company, which describes itself as "dedicated to giving a s***", will use the Duchess’s money to begin selling internationally.
They won’t find that hard. Clevr’s online order system is currently jam-packed til January "due to high demand", perhaps thanks to Oprah’s efforts.
However, I was able to find two of Clevr’s four flavours at Gold and Rust, a vintage boutique in the chichi counterculture hub of Berkeley (incidentally not far from where Vice President Kamala Harris grew up). Despite losing her shop front to coronavirus, co-owner Cassandra McCall kindly agreed to hand the precious powder over in person.
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For a few dizzying minutes when ordering online, I had thought they were $28 for one drink; quite a tea bag. But at 14 servings per packet, your money goes a little further than that, and it’s not out of line with posher products from other companies.
Each bag Clevr bag is packed with superfoods of ancient renown: red Reishi mushrooms, Indian ashwagandha berries and Lion’s Mane, a bizarre-looking fungus that grows in clouds of densely-layered tendrils on the sides of trees.
The base is powdered oat milk – fairly standard in the San Francisco Bay Area, where lightening your tea with milk from a cow instead of a soybean or an almond causes other people to look at you like you’ve just grown udders yourself.
SuperLatte #1: Arabica coffee
Before going in, I took some time to meditate in order to establish my baseline. That’s not a joke; maybe I’ve been here too long, but I felt that if I was going to test Clevr’s energy-giving powers I would need to be conscious of where my body and brain were starting from.
Carefully, I first split open the coffee SuperLatte, made with Arabica beans from a small farmers’ co-operative in Colombia. From the bag, its bouquet was sharp, earthy, piquant in a way I can’t quite define (they should have sent a wine critic).
What is a SuperLatte? Guide to Clevr health drink backed by Meghan Markle
The preparation really was easy: boil water, mix, froth, drink. Lacking one of Clevr’s own rechargeable electric milk frothers, I achieved the desirable consistency with an egg whisk.
Finally the moment arrived. I lifted my grandmother’s bone china Charles and Diana mug, issued by Crown Trent to commemorate their royal wedding on July 29, 1981, and took a sip.
It was… nice? Yes, it was very nice. The bitterness of the coffee played unpretentious cello to the viola of that high, earthy, even meaty tang. It was certainly more pleasant than my regular black coffee, the finest produce of Amazon Inc.
In fact, it was kind of addictive. I found myself sipping it down rather quickly as I typed out my thoughts, and I could easily imagine drinking this every day.
But I could already feel the rush coming on, and there was still another bag to try. Feeling like a criminal – or perhaps some kind of religious fanatic dynamiting ancient architectural treasures – I poured the rest into the sink.
SuperLatte #2: Matcha tea
Next up was the matcha latte, an upgrade of the powdered green tea used in tradition Japanese tea ceremonies. More recently, it has been widely popularised in the West as a health food, not only drinks but in ice cream, brownies and more.
Accordingly, this was less striking than the coffee, delightfully smooth but more in line with the flavour you would expect from any matcha latte. That piquant taste – most likely the Lion’s Mane, apparently a little like lobster – was present but more subtle.
With 50mg of caffeine per helping to the Clevr coffee’s 70mg, this was a more even high that gently saw me through the rest of the afternoon’s work.
Still, you might have to set more store by the ingredients’ medicinal properties, which science has not robustly confirmed, to justify the extra cash here.
As for the promised "long-term energy", your results may vary. I have ADHD, meaning that A) my brain slurps up caffeine like a competitive eater and then asks if there’s any more, and B) I was drinking this stuff top of my usual morning dose of prescribed stimulant medication.
Still, having meditated beforehand to find my baseline, the coffee SuperLatte rapidly imbued me with a pleasing zing that made work flow quickly. I am not entirely sure that it was, as advertised, "jitter-free", and as for "without the crash", I would politely but firmly beg to differ.
But then again, in my zeal to deliver an authoritative review for Telegraph readers, I might have had a little too much.
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