DAVIDsTEA

This tastes true to its name, though the flavors are much milder than I would have expected. I drink my matcha with milk, and this is the first one I’ve had where I found the milk drowned out the flavor sometimes. I enjoy the tang of the pineapple, and I find this pretty smooth.

Sipdown

Alas, this was my last 4 oz bag! I drank it semi-regularly as a latte with my breakfast or as a work pick-me-up. It was perfectly sweet and made for a wonderful treat!

knittingopera Swap Advent Calendar 2024 – Day 23
Theme: White Christmas
My pick: Winter White Earl Grey from Harney & Sons

Sorry, just catching up on some notes for teas I did drink but didn’t get around to posting about…

This was nice enough, sweet and buttery with a bright orange flavor to it. Marjorie said she likes it better than Forever Nuts, and I think I agree. Still not something I would order as overall it was quite sweet, but a tasty cuppa.

I can’t believe there are no other reviews of this! A creamy matcha made with vanilla soy milk pairs so nicely with the banana flavour. It reminds me of those banana marshmallow candies. Very tasty with breakfast!

I sure miss when DT used to let you choose some free samples with your order. Lucily, I get them in the mail on the rare occasion.

This is quite sour, without any sweetness to balance out the hibiscus. I would expect the blackberry leaves to help but I couldn’t taste them. It brews a bit weak, but I could see pople enjoying it as a coldbrew if they brewed it over 2+ days or using 2x the amount of tea. I can taste some nice fruity notes and citrus.

In many ways this tea is kind of wish fulfillment on my part because I’ve wanted to make a churro tea since about 2021, and actually there were MANY variations on this profile that we tried before landing on this one…

However, personal interest aside, I think you almost have to have been sleeping under a rock to not see how commercial and popular the churro flavour profile has become in the last couple of years. I feel like I turn my head while grocery shopping and I see a new churro something every time. Kit-Kat. Ben & Jerry’s. Oreos. Haagen Dazs Ice Cream Bars. Baileys. Flipz Pretzels. Turtle Chips. Eggos. Bugles. I could literally just go on and on listing even more…

So, I think firstly, this is a sweet tea. It very literally has cinnamon sugar in it in a way that I find very eerily replicates the kind of cinnamon sugar you might have tossed on a bunch of churros fresh out of the frier at, like, a state fair or carnival. It’s really nostalgic to me, and even though it launched in the heart of winter it reminds me so much of the end of summer vacations where the carnival would roll into town for a week and you would BEG your parents to go and for one glorious night you would win stupid plushies at the midway, go on maybe a hundred rides, and eat candy apples, fudge, lemonade, and – yes – churros until you were sick. Just cherished memories. I mean, my very first job was working at a pizza stand (that served macaroni and cheese pizza) on the midway at a carnival right across from a churro booth. That smell of frier oil and cinnamon is practically BURNED into my head.

But sweet cinnamon aside, I think one of the other things I like about this blend is that it does maybe taste just a little greasy? But not in a bad way at all – just in that way that feels authentic to the fact that churros are a deep fried pastry. It’s balanced out by the black tea base which adds a nice amount of body and briskness and then a gentle creamy golden sweetness from the caramel inclusion – like a nod to dulce de leche which is my personal favourite thing to dip churros into, and something I discovered through exploring Mexican cuisine as more of an adult version the straight up cinnamon sugar I was used to from my childhood.

I do think this tea is nice on its own, but in my personal opinion is shines the must with an addition of milk (or alt milk) or if made into a latte. Hot or iced, I think both are really good. Toss a cinnamon stick in there and some foam with a caramel drizzle? Oh, that is HEAVEN in a mug. All my churro tea dreams come true.

Friendly reminder that I do not numerically rate DAVIDsTEA blends as I’m currently employed there and it would be an obvious conflict of interest. Any blends you see with numerical ratings were rated prior to my employment there. These reviews are a reflection of my personal thoughts and feelings regarding the teas, and not the company’s.

Another new one, though perhaps familiar in some ways.

When we were doing the development for this tea we really had an older DT blend called Lemon Cayenne Cleanse top of mind. It’s a tea that we definitely get requests to bring back, but when we were carrying it we also got a lot of requests/feedback that from a functional angle the caffeine from the white tea was an obstacle for how people were wanting to consume it/incorporate it into their wellness routines. I even remember having that conversation pretty regularly back when LCC launched and I was working in stores…

So, with this tea, we were really focused on taking that feedback and sort of reimagining what that tea could have been if it were a herbal tea. So, no caffeine of course but we also decided to boost that bright, sweet lemon flavour some complimenting ingredients that would further support the wellness direction – namely ginger and cleansing dandelion root. It’s still very much a lemon forward blend but now it has those gingery undertones to it that lean into the hint of cayenne/chili in the finish that we carried over from Lemon Cayenne Cleanse. So, the name is kind of two fold now representing both the kick/hint of spice at the end of the sip that slowly builds over the coarse of a mug and a bit of a pun like as if saying “kick cold season aside” since this is sort of an immunity and detox blend folded into one.

Y’all know I’m not personally a big consumer of tea for wellness related reasons, but I have to say that I really enjoy this one in a purely flavour basis as well too. The lemon is so fresh and bright feeling with the perfect amount of natural sweetness, and the ginger balances it really nicely without being as strong as, say, Blue Ginger Detox or Super Ginger (both of which are a little much for me personally). And most surprisingly is that I actually LOVE this tea cold brewed or iced. It’s so refreshing!

Friendly reminder that I do not numerically rate DAVIDsTEA blends as I’m currently employed there and it would be an obvious conflict of interest. Any blends you see with numerical ratings were rated prior to my employment there. These reviews are a reflection of my personal thoughts and feelings regarding the teas, and not the company’s.

So within the last two(ish) weeks DT has released a handful of new teas, and I’m afraid I was so busy feeling with advents that I’m just now getting around to logging them here…

This one is pretty straight forward, I think. It’s essentially the Vanilla Matcha from our year-round assortment but with all of the cane sugar removed. Same matcha base, same organic vanilla flavouring. Just, well, sugar/sweetener free. It’s not intended to be replacing the cane sugar sweetened vanilla so much as just adding more options for people who would prefer to sweeten their matcha themselves or drink it with no sweetener. We’ve had a few other unsweetened matcha flavours before and although they don’t seem to get the same reception as the sweetened ones there has been a consistent request from a segment of our customers to offer that again. So, we’re starting here!

I personally really like the cane sugar vanilla matcha, and so it’s not a surprise to me that I enjoy this one as well. I appreciate that you need so much less of it to make a drink, and I think it’s a REALLY refreshing matcha latte with just enough flavour even without adding any sweetener to it. However, of course, because sugar is a flavour amplifier I think you just have to expect that this isn’t quite as rich and overt a vanilla flavour as the cane sugar one – you taste much, much more of the matcha itself and for people who aren’t used to drinking flavoured matchas without ANY sweetening agent I think there could be a potential for disappointment at just how much contrast there is between the two versions.

That said, I’m glad we’re continuing to give unsweetened matchas a try because I do think having a middle ground between the typical sweetened matchas and just a plain matcha is important – especially for people who come into our matcha collection as someone experiencing matcha for the first time who, as they get more used to the taste of the matcha itself, maybe then needs something to “graduate to” before going full blown straight Ceremonial Matcha.

Friendly reminder that I do not numerically rate DAVIDsTEA blends as I’m currently employed there and it would be an obvious conflict of interest. Any blends you see with numerical ratings were rated prior to my employment there. These reviews are a reflection of my personal thoughts and feelings regarding the teas, and not the company’s.

Adventageddon Day 19

Apparently I never added the organic version of Strawberry Matcha into Steepster like I do for all the other organic conversions – even though we’ve been selling it now for nearly a year. Oops.

Generally speaking I typically find the organic flavoured matchas pretty equivalent to their non-organic counterparts which a couple exceptions like Vanilla and Candy Cane since, respectively, those two use a different type of sugar and have an extra flavouring. This one, however, is another that I personally think is just a little bit different too. It’s still very good, but I’ve always felt like DT’s strawberry matcha was surprisingly quite creamy tasting and this one (to me at least) is a little bit brighter and more ripe tasting with less of that strawberry shake sort of vibe. Unless you latte it, of course.

I was kind of hoping it would pop up in the advent selections a little earlier because I had a bunch of frozen strawberries at one point that I turned into a nice strawberry jam/compote, but I’ve used them all up now so instead I just had this one hot and plain. A very, very big amount of it though. I was definitely quite awake feeling most of the afternoon. You can see in the photo I drank this out of a teacup and saucer set, but it’s deceptively very large. Bigger than every chawan I own except for one, in fact…

Today’s Advent Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DDxqOyIyeMK/?img_index=1

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RpAQ-iSU9k&ab_channel=HeySteve-Topic

Friendly reminder that I do not numerically rate DAVIDsTEA blends as I’m currently employed there and it would be an obvious conflict of interest. Any blends you see with numerical ratings were rated prior to my employment there. These reviews are a reflection of my personal thoughts and feelings regarding the teas, and not the company’s.

Homemade Advent Calendar from AJRimmer: Day 14

I really enjoy these kinds of coffee replacements, but I rarely buy them because I do drink regular coffee and they’re not top of mind for me. Which is a shame, because, again… I really enjoy them.

Anyway, it was fun to try this one. It’s a pretty classic flavor profile with the base ingredients, but in a more “sweet coffee drink” kind of way — there’s some sweetness from the dates and monkfruit and some kind of vanilla creaminess from the natural flavors.

I definitely prefer Teeccino because of its cleaner, simpler, and more coffee-like taste, but I think this is a great option for folks who are trying to transition from sweeter coffee drinks. I enjoyed trying it!

Adventageddon Day 11

Today’s DAVIDsTEA selection is not only a brand new tea blend, but also one that’s completely exclusive to the advent! How fun!

It’s a green tea with a relatively simple ingredient list including cinnamon and vanilla. If it weren’t obvious from the name, this inspiration is definitely eggnog. DT has carried eggnog inspired teas before, the most recent and iconic of which is probably Let It Snow which is also green tea. That’s a blend I have a personal love/hate relationship with. I like it a lot as a latte, but I find it so sweet and the stevia in it can be a lot for me, even as someone who typically doesn’t mind stevia in my teas.

So the goal here was to do eggnog in a less cloying sort of way and with simpler ingredients, but without sacrificing on fun and flavour. Here’s a little behind the curtains for you all: before we landed on the name Noggy & Nice the “working name” for this blend was Great Aunt Ruth’s Spiked Eggnog. A bit of a mouthful, for sure, but definitely cheeky and playful. Plus, it makes sense in the context of the blend because this isn’t just eggnog. It’s eggnog if that crazy out there relative from the big family holiday get together spiked the eggnog with a little buttered rum. And, to that point, really “old school” DT fans might find there’s some similarities with this blend and the much older Buttered Rum black tea blend. Both are creamy and just a little sweet with that almost butterscotch-y lifesaver candy undertone. Of course, this one is also pretty custardy and has a light touch of festive cinnamon.

I really enjoyed this blend and, even though it’s advent exclusive, I’m just kind of glad that in some way I got to share it with more people. It was a fun concept to work on!

Today’s Advent Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DDdEnRYpD_0/?img_index=1

I wanted to take a cooler photo for this tea since it’s so special, but it rained all day today and the lighting was just sad and grey. So I don’t really feel this does the tea justice, but I guess better than nothing.

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzUHKsywhrY&ab_channel=THUNDERJACKSONVEVO

Friendly reminder that I do not numerically rate DAVIDsTEA blends as I’m currently employed there and it would be an obvious conflict of interest. Any blends you see with numerical ratings were rated prior to my employment there. These reviews are a reflection of my personal thoughts and feelings regarding the teas, and not the company’s.

David’s 24 Days of Tea Day 1:

This was the first tea of my tea advent calendar. I’ve had the David’s tea calendar several times in the past but it got pretty repetitive (that is, it featured the same teas year after year) so I stopped getting it. Well, this year I decided to go back. And I can see from the back of the box that several teas will be repeats, but there are quite a few that are new to me this year. Like this one. I enjoyed it. It was a light tea, not brisk or heavy with tannins. There was a bit of tartness but it wasn’t completely sour. I won’t order 50 grams of it but I will enjoy a second cup probably in January. I like that David’s give us enough tea to make more than one cup. Sometimes that second cup is even better than the first.

I’ve been mostly missing in action here on Steepster for a few months. I’ve had a bit of a challenging late summer and autumn. The chemo cocktail they had me on is called FolFox. On my third treatment (in August) I had a pretty severe reaction to the Oxylplatin (or however you spell it). They had to put a breathing device down my throat to keep my airway from closing completely. So since then I’ve been on just two different drugs. It has been a slog and my fatigue has been pretty bad. I have one more treatment this Wednesday. Then scans on the 18th and meet with the oncologist on the 24 (Yes. Christmas Eve!) to plan the next step of treatment. I should have all of January off from any treatment, so you can imagine I am really looking forward to January! Maybe my “Get Up and Go” will Get Up and Come Back!

Adventageddon Day 3

Cold Brew!

It was a triple cherry kind of day today. By fun coincidence both of my tea choices from DT were cherry flavoured, and by even more of a coincidence I had a sweet cherry and vanilla cream flavoured yule log cake to enjoy with them.

This was probably my favourite tea of the day, and I’m sure a part of that is some bias from the fact I developed this tea. It’s a brand new organic blend that (right now) is only available through the advent. I’ll almost certainly do a more proper review when it actually launches fully like I do with all new teas, but I’m a little too tired to dive into that right now. For the day I had it chilled because in general I prefer my cherry teas cold, and the tart cherry and green apple notes from this blend are so vibrant and full of life when prepared this way! The apple cider vinegar inclusion also just gives it a wonderfully tangy note that leans into those festive, cider-y flavours.

Today’s Advent Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DDIdoKPSOFh/?img_index=1

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4FnLug0BVw&ab_channel=dogeyes

Friendly reminder that I do not numerically rate DAVIDsTEA blends as I’m currently employed there and it would be an obvious conflict of interest. Any blends you see with numerical ratings were rated prior to my employment there. These reviews are a reflection of my personal thoughts and feelings regarding the teas, and not the company’s.

I got a horrible stomach ache from drinking this. I think it might have stevia in it, but my package does not list stevia on the ingredients. I wonder if there could be blackberry leaf as a sweetener? It tastes very sweet, anyway. I get painful stomach aches every time I consume stevia, which is why I’m suspicious but I don’t think DT would make such a big labelling error.

Some nice herbs (basil and pepper) and vegetal notes. I taste the hibiscus but it is overwhelmed by the sweetness. There are some minor fruity notes from theh ibiscus and also something that tastes like berry and dried cranberries.

Grape seems a little odd for a tea but it wasn’t awful just wasn’t wonderful.

Just ok. The stevia aftertaste kills what would be a decent dessert tea.

It’s a bit sweet but good!

Sipdown/Backlog

I quite liked this one. What sold this for me was the addition of spinach; I thought that it was an odd addition to a blend, but it drove me to grab some. I think the time spent sitting in the bag/sipdown pile for the past year (or longer?), helped bring the lemongrass and orange forward! I was a bit surprised to not find white chocolate in the blend, but I noted that flavor a few times on my scrap paper.

This is quite earthy, but it also has a distinct root beer flavor. I’m enjoying it cold, though it’s far from the best root beer tea I’ve had. I taste a little too much licorice. It was also too caffeinated for my low caffeine tolerance. It made me feel bad enough that I’ll probably drink any of my other root beer teas instead of this one. The cold resteep tastes super similar to the first.

Adventageddon Day 1

Last but certainly not least was Clementine Cheer! I decided to cold brew this one since I was able to supplement the little tin of tea with some extra tea leaf from my personal tea stash. I was super excited to see this tea so early in the advent because it’s one of the new holiday yeas I developed this year. It totally made my afternoon and evening reading and watching the different reviews across social platforms for people drinking and discovering this tea for the first time – both tea friends and complete strangers!

I actually usually drink this tea hot, but I enjoyed my cold brew a lot. It’s really bright and lively in its top notes with this fresh, effervescent mix of clementine and tangerine notes before the gentle roast and minerality of the oolong base sneak in there and ground it a little bit. Without that oolong I think the orange wouldn’t have quite as much presence because it would be brightness with no contrast, and maybe also just a little thin feeling. The finish is just a hint creamy with the vanilla yogurt flavour closing out the sip.

So refreshing, and a great way of building on that feeling of excitement for the holidays without necessarily leaning on super decadent and “heavy feeling” flavours more conventionally associated with Christmas. Those have a place too, don’t get me wrong, but I know we will have plenty of them throughout the rest of advent season so I just appreciated starting things off with something so joyful!

Today’s Advent Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DDDUEFtyMDA/?img_index=1

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fyi0g_ldl3I&ab_channel=NiinaSoleil

Friendly reminder that I do not numerically rate DAVIDsTEA blends as I’m currently employed there and it would be an obvious conflict of interest. Any blends you see with numerical ratings were rated prior to my employment there. These reviews are a reflection of my personal thoughts and feelings regarding the teas, and not the company’s.

Last of the new teas is Clementine Cheer!

Obviously this is an orange blend, but it actually has the flavour of three different kints of orange/citrus in it: clementine (of course), your typical naval orange, and tangerine! The tangerines in it are these beautiful dried tangerine segments that come out of Georgia and visually they’re one of my all time favourite ingredients from DT. Plus, once you’ve steeped your mug of tea they’re really delicious to snack out out of the steeped leaf. Kind of like Midsummer Night’s Dream and the gooseberries in that blend.

The base we went with is oolong, and though you might assume a lighter oxidized oolong this is actually a more oxidized/roasted oolong. The leaves are beautiful and more wiry looking as opposed to ball rolled style. It’s not a strong flavour in the overall composition, but that hint of roast does create a really nice contrast pairing with the orange that makes it pop a little bit more while still adding some body.

Aside from being very bright, lively, and citrusy this blend also has a smooth, creamy undertone from inclusions like yogurt pieces and vanilla flavouring. Sometimes I think of it as a bit like Strawberry Rhubarb Parfait or Frozen Raspberry since those blends are also fruit and yogurt pairings, but I think this one is a bit less sweet and definitely not as tart since there’s no hibiscus in this tea. And speaking of comparisons, I’d say that compared to the two other core orange blends DT carries (Sunny C and Blood Orange Boost) that it’s also true this is less sweet and less tart comparatively. Also, obviously, creamier.

Even with that creamy component, there’s almost an effervescence to the citrus notes in this tea that I think work really well with the “cheer” part of the name. Like, yes it’s a nice cheerful tasting orange blend but it’s also kind of building in that idea of a orange mimosa or spritz that you might cheers with at a holiday or new year’s brunch, family get together, or party/celebration. It’s just lively, and celebratory and kind of happy feeling. To that point, it’s obviously good hot and predictably good iced but it’s VERY good as a tea pop. With a splash of champagne or prosecco if you want to go that cocktail kind of route.

Friendly reminder that I do not numerically rate DAVIDsTEA blends as I’m currently employed there and it would be an obvious conflict of interest. Any blends you see with numerical ratings were rated prior to my employment there. These reviews are a reflection of my personal thoughts and feelings regarding the teas, and not the company’s.

Y’all. Making a gingerbread tea was so much harder than I expected it to be.

It took probably around three years to really perfect this blend to the point where we were ready to launch it. The ginger was maybe the easiest part, but getting the balance of the rest of the spices and that really distinct, borderline molasses tasting “sweet brown” flavour was tough. A lot of previous versions of this tea came out either fruity leaning or too bright and just not quite right. I love this one though. It’s my favourite of all the new holiday teas this year.

The pu’erh tea base is so essential to getting the profile right. It’s full-bodied, very rich and also grounding and earthy which created the perfect framework to layer the spices and more decadent notes overtop. In addition to ginger this blend has all the spices that are traditionally used in gingerbread. It’s really the use of allspice that gives it that especially cozy and festive sort of spice note and feeling. I just said it in another tasting note, but it’s sort of crazy how in North America we have this Pavlovian response to allspice where we just associate that taste with the holidays. I think it REALLY captures that dense, darkly spice and sweet gingerbread flavour so well though!

And of course the toffee! Y’all know I love a good caramel or toffee blend, and I think the toffee note in this tea is pretty close to perfect. It’s thick and not too bright at all so it really emulates that deeply golden, densely rich sweetness very well. There’s a hint of cocoa in the blend and though I personally prefer my toffee/caramel teas without chocolate I do think that inclusion really helps give it some depth and extra decadence.

And so good as a latte. Hot, but also iced. I drink it as an iced latte very, very often. It was one of my go to iced latte blends this summer while I was waiting for it to launch. Haven’t done it as an eggnog latte yet, but I can only imagine the sublime level of indulgence that would be.

I think this blend will really appeal to fans of teas like Salted Caramel Oolong, Cardamom French Toast, Brown Sugar Bourbon, English Toffee (IMO it’s way better than English Toffee), Burnt Sugar Boba, S’mores Chai, Jack Frosted Mocha, and Hazelnut Chocolate. Y’know. The decadent, sweet, and brown tasting teas. Like, I don’t want to call it prematurely but I can see this becoming on of those big returning holiday teas. But maybe that’s me projecting a little bit.

Friendly reminder that I do not numerically rate DAVIDsTEA blends as I’m currently employed there and it would be an obvious conflict of interest. Any blends you see with numerical ratings were rated prior to my employment there. These reviews are a reflection of my personal thoughts and feelings regarding the teas, and not the company’s.

Adventageddon Day 9

I’ve been excitedly waiting for this loose leaf tea from DT’s 24 Days of Tea to show up in the adventageddon assortment. It was one of my favourite blends to work on for this year’s holiday assortment: rich, creamy and cozy with notes of coconut and white chocolate and a playfully snowy looking visual that feels like a snowstorm waiting to be steeped! I especially love how velvety the mouthfeel is.

Today’s Advent Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DDX7CdLyJ4E/?img_index=1

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8C1l50UcJlA&ab_channel=PETITELEAGUE

Friendly reminder that I do not numerically rate DAVIDsTEA blends as I’m currently employed there and it would be an obvious conflict of interest. Any blends you see with numerical ratings were rated prior to my employment there. These reviews are a reflection of my personal thoughts and feelings regarding the teas, and not the company’s.