New Tasting Notes

A very decent Assam tea with an interesting aftertaste. Its aroma is like honey and rosehip at first, moving towards chocolate and raspberry notes during the session. The taste is quite smooth and herbaceous for an Assam tea, but has the classic woody and malty backbone. The finish and aftertaste is bitter with notes of mint, taro and other root vegetables.

I just added this tea to the website – it’s one of the most recent reblends! There are very limited quantities remaining of this one though!

Anyway – I absolutely love this tea. It’s a little different from my previous reblend of this tea. I used my blend of Yunnan & Assam teas, but it still turned out amazing. I really love this as a cold-brew. I made it into a boba tea, complete with brown sugar boba & a salted cheese topping! YUM!

Cold Brew!

I was really thirsty when I drank this, to the point where I almost feel like I didn’t fully process the flavours. Almost. Definitely a whole lot of lime in a pleasantly sweet but bright way. Like a flat Sprite, almost? I wish the cherry was a little richer, but it still comes through. It’s a refreshing and nostalgic feeling flavour profile!

Drank a mug of this a few nights ago while watching Nimona, which was very good and I would highly recommend watching. Super well animated, and just a really beautiful story. The tea was good too. I’d been craving it all day so the first few sips were especially satisfying, and I continue to just really appreciate the balance of sweet, nutty almond pastry with fresh and bright notes of citrus and melon. It’s so unique! The aroma did sometimes come off a little sudsy, but the tea never tasted like soap so while it was weird it wasn’t a damper on the overall cup at least.

Cold Brew!

So I decided to take my giant Stanley-style travel mug out for a spin again and see if I might enjoy using it more with another tea. For anyone who missed my first tasting note, this is a 40oz sized travel mug – so it’s a lot of cold brew.

I adore this tea so much though, so it seemed like as good a choice to trial run it with as any. The tea was really nice at first! Bold black tea with rich, aromatic notes of cherry blossom and a sweeter candy-type strawberry note following that. All wrapped up with a floral finish. But I think it’s simply just too much of any one tea flavour to drink at a time because I was just so sick of this tea by around halfway in…

I’m gonna try it once more with another tea – but I think this just isn’t a travel mug style for me…

Steeped this one up this morning and it was such a delight! Very oolong forward in the first half of the sip with a mix of creamier flavours (and mouthfeel) along with fresh, aromatic florals. The backend was more licorice-y with those smooth, mouthcoating notes of anise, fennel, and gentle-y pine tasting juniper. So easy to just melt and relax into the cup with this one!

Had a mug of this today but found myself slightly underwhelmed by it. It was a smooth and tasty infusion, but it definitely read a bit more maple-like to me with very subtle spice inclusions and a little white chocolate creaminess. Not so specifically carrot cake, and I think for it to be closer I would have wanted more of the clean, earthy carrot flavour but also just a more intense spice make up with obvious clove or allspice type notes.

Sipdown (2789)!

A very, very long time coming cold brew sipdown. Honestly, how this tea still tastes as nice as it does given the age is beyond me – but I guess it helps a lot that I picked out all the coconut pieces ages and ages ago.

The brew is very sweet and I taste the chocolate notes first and foremost – very much like a hot fudge sauce you’d have on ice cream. From there I get the sweet taffy-like banana flavour, and a little bit of a butterscotch sorta undertone. The finish does have a tinge of funk to it, I won’t lie. Not quite rancid coconut or anything but it’s sorta soapy in a lingering way. Does detract from the overall indulgence, for sure. But I still find this pretty freaking nostalgic and it’s a touch sad to see it go. I know I was a bit of an outlier and most people didn’t seem to appreciate how intense and sweet this blend was. That’s okay though, it just meant more for me for quite a long period of time…

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.

Tea Pop!

A coworker and I both made teapops of this on Monday but using the blackberry flavoured Bubly as our sparkling water. It was good, but the flavour of Sunny C is soooo intensely juicy and citrus forward that it was tough to taste the blackberry at all. Sort of just felt like a regular Sunny C tea pop but with a slightly “deeper” flavour? Probably could have found a stronger use for the Bubly, but I appreciated the refreshing cool down nonetheless.

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 don’t revisit this tea often for a few reasons. The primary is honestly just that I don’t love the taste of coffee, but also this blend reminds me of an ex quite a lot and that’s a feeling I don’t really love revisiting. However, I was DEEPLY craving a Coffee Crisp over the weekend but it was so incredibly cold and gross out that I wasn’t about to leave my house just for a chocolate bar, so I pulled this out instead and, honestly!? Kind of tasted like drinking a liquid version of a Coffee Crisp. Pretty dang solid, and way better than a fifteen minute walk to the closest grocery store in the ice cold.

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.

Gongfu!

Pulling out one of my tinier gaiwans today for a little tea session. Just large enough to get a taste of this new-to-me addition to my stash, and with beautiful hand painted pink detailing that I already know is going to compliment the notes of this oolong quite well! You can call it optimism, but I’m ready for winter to pass and spring to roll on in, so I’ve been leaning into that fresh and fragrant feeling through my tea sessions as of late. This one is so bright and floral, as if sticking your nose straight into a bouquet of lilies. Honey-sweet with an underlying creaminess, maybe a little coconut water on the backend with that clean, crisp feeling you get from freshly washed linens. It’s a beautiful tea that showcases some of my favourite tastes and aromas in greener/less oxidized Taiwanese oolongs.

Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DGY0cx4yQhe/?img_index=1

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScBqWkDyxZw&ab_channel=PhoebeGo

Gongfu Sipdown (2790)!

Drank this while reading the latest issue of Eighty Degrees! It’s not a secret that I’m not really a huge Japanese green tea fan aside from my vocal love of roasted green teas, and I can’t even remember how I ended up with this particular tea sample. However, it’s clearly a nice gyokuro and I found that it was pretty inoffensive to my palate given that it’s not something I’d typically be brewing. Very, veeerrryyy smooth and buttery mouthfeel with a really unctuous and fatty profile with strong notes of nori, spinach, and miso. Really just an explosion of broth and umami, and were it not for those greener, oceanic elements I feel like I could get really into this. But those seaweed and leafy green flavours just aren’t for me, and that’s okay!

It was still a solid accompaniment to a laid back morning flipping through the different articles and photo series in this issue!!

Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DGbjJOdyrEy/?img_index=1

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSjUEiBIonE&ab_channel=TheCriticals

Since first trying this tea, I’ve fallen quite in love with goishicha. This fermented Japanese tea is just such a fantastically funky, fruity tea with such a deliciously tart, tangy sort of flavour. Notes of apple cider vinegar, pickled plums, lemon, and the sort of lactic acid taste of something like a Greek yogurt or Yakult yogurt drink. All with a somewhat smoky and tobacco-like green undertone. It’s A LOT, but in a good kind of way. The kind of way that makes it the perfect pairing for a manga like Chainsaw Man that jumps in tone so frequently.

Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DGd9-NpSGmb/?img_index=1

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2NkXPv-stc&ab_channel=onlyrealtv

Gongfu!

Started my morning with one of the best heicha tea sessions I’ve had in a very, very long time. It’s so thick and rich in cooling menthol and camphor notes, with a punch of medicinal and forest-y flavour, and really tingly, mouth numbing spice undertones of clove, cassia oil, and black cardamom alongside bittersweet dark chocolate. Despite all of that, the mouthfeel is really creamy. It’s just so flavourful but with such a visceral mouth sensation and body feel. I don’t know if I’ve been this glowy and tea drunk feeling in a while…

Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DGgq63PSr7h/?img_index=1

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i39g22RiTqA&ab_channel=CigarettesAfterSex

Sipdown! I overleafed the last cup I had of this as I was wondering if it would bring out the pumpkin flavor. Seems that it did the trick, but it is a bit heavy on the clove too. Not my favorite from OBTC but I’m glad I got to try. I do like the honeybush base, but not enough for a future purchase.

This is an engaging Nepalese tea thanks to its complexity and a creamy mouthfeel.

The dry leaves smell of caramel, roasted nuts, malt, sugarcane, while the wet leaf aroma reminds me of sahlep, hay, rose, and roasted barley. The taste is sweet and toasty with some floral notes as well as flavours of milk, honey, malt, chocolate and grains.

I finally got around to trying the 6 grams of tea I received from White Antlers and derk. Thank you both! I miss the first member dearly; I hope they are doing well.

I used all 6 grams in my teapot today, steeping it for roughly 3 minutes—and it was wonderful.

The aroma in the cup was reminiscent of an old antique shop or bookstore. I detected notes of mustiness, a touch of boiled linseed oil, sisal, and a hint of dust. Nevertheless, it evoked a cozy feeling, making me wish I were enjoying it in an armchair by the fireplace. The only trouble is, I have neither!

Tastewise it was mellow, smooth and a little creamy shou; with woody, wet forest floor and a little of mushroomy taste. Earthy aftertaste, but not bitter, savoury and strong, but not so heavy in the stomach.

I’m a little sad that I finished it so quickly, after only one session. We rarely do more than one infusion; in extraordinary cases, we’ll do two. If I particularly enjoy a tea, I might even do a third — but that’s usually just for me.

Hands down, this is a brilliant tea.

This is very average and forgettable. Sometimes it has hints of stone fruit and honey but not in a way that really wowed me. Wouldn’t repurchase.

This is perhaps the best Nilgiri tea I have had. It is very aromatic and tasty with a buttery mouthfeel and a pungent and protracted aftertaste.

The strong dry leaf smell has notes of jasmine, courgette flowers, compost, burdock, and camphor. The last one persists during the session and is complemented by meaty, vegetal, and herbaceous aromas.

The taste is savoury, floral and bitter, while the aftertaste is more spicy and sweet. There are flavours of butter, vegetables such as rapini and courgette, and various spices.

2025 sipdown no. 8

There are both baked cherry and honey notes, but neither are as robust as I anticipated. Regardless, I had no issue polishing off 25g and look forward to the other red oolongs I have to try.

I tried this in my gaiwan doing 15-30 second steeps, western with a 2 minute, 2.5 minute, and 3 minute steep. I personally enjoyed the 3 minute western steep best.

Harvest: Spring, March 2024
Origin: Chokechamroen, T.E., Doi Mae Salong, Thailand

Hot, this doesn’t taste like much. Cold with milk and sugar, it’s a pretty decent decaf EG! It’s smooth and well-balanced. The resteep was pretty hearty as well.

Sip down

I don’t always get the apple type flavor I did on the first try, but its still good. Still not sure if I want to rebuy.