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A lot better than I remember this one tasting last time I had it.

It’s quite sweet, but definitely in a mapley and somewhat more natural way as opposed to a super forced cloying artificial flavour/straight up sugar kind of way. I almost feel like I get a bit of the “sap” from the tree too, and not just pure maple. You know what I mean? Sap definitely has this well defined almost pine-y kind of quality to it. The apple is nice; it’s not really tart and more mellow like a Gala apple – crisp, sweet, red apple flavour. The cinnamon in the background gives it this nice cider quality, like it’s named for. It’s pretty enjoyable as far as bagged teas go!

Another new Cuppa’T edition to the stash!

Yesterday I decided to take a venture down to the Farmer’s Market on my day off; I ended up with a pretty solid haul which I’ve been enjoying throughout the weekend! In addition to a pouch of this tea, I ended up nabbing:

- A sack of locally grown potatoes (very excited to cook something with these)
- Some homemade cookies for the not-boyfriend since he had kindly requested some
- Two loafs of lemon dill bread from my favourite baker
- Some vegan friendly, stone ground flour chocolate chip cookie mix
- The worlds BEST pineapple/mango salsa
- A jar of garlic infused honey (not sure what I’ll use it with, but excited to figure it out)
- A bottle of creamsicle turmeric nut milk (SO GOOD)
- A bottle of “Vitamin G” fresh pressed juice; it’s orange/cucumber/ginger/carrot/lemon
- And a homemade raspberry mint ‘freezie’ to enjoy while I shopped

I mean, that’s a pretty fucking good haul.

The bread got snacked out throughout the weekend, the salsa used today with some nachos I made for the family, the juices drank and enjoyed, and the first set of cookies given to the not-boyfriend and now it’s time for me to enjoy the tea! I’m starting off with a cold brew, because it’s hotter than the underside of a nutsack today.

This one jumped out at me because I don’t really have a herbal tea on hand with chocolate and orange and I thought it might be nice to since I do really love that flavour combination. Initial observations about this one drinking it cold brewed are that it’s REALLY heavy on the chocolate though. Like, easily the most prominent flavour is the chocolate. There’s some orange going on here, but mostly in the background and it’s hard to pick it out until the finish of the sip when the smooth, creamy and intense chocolate notes are subsiding.

Apart from that, this one does seem fairly straight forward: lots of chocolate and a little bit of orange. It’s smooth and sweet without tasting cloying or artificial. Cold brew may not have been the best way to go about making this for the first time but if I can accept that this is just much more chocolate than it is orange I think it could be a pretty tasty tea to have around in the meantime – especially for evenings.

Sipdown (264)!

Thank you for the tea sample VariaTea! This one has such a strange name, there’s absolutely NO way I’d guess any of the ingredients based on the name alone. Is the idea that this is a somewhat savory/spiced tea and then in addition to that they’re playing on the thought that your ’mom’s cooking’ is this comforting thing? If so, I suppose I can SORT OF see that…

I will agree with the one other reviewer who’s tried this tea: there’s something about it that does remind me a lot of DAVIDsTEA’s Throat Rescue blend. More likely than not I think it’s just the generous use of licorice root and fennel though – it’s a REALLY strong flavour. Personally, I quite like the fennel part of it but the licorice root is kind of gross to me. Other than that, there’s some sweeter ginger notes that are pleasant enough; in particular they come through relatively clearly in the finish of the sip and after taste. It’s the licorice root sweetening them, and almost giving them a “candied ginger” quality but HINTS of something spicier are present in the aftertaste.

The best part of the blend is certainly the orange in it – in my opinion that’s what separates it from blends like Throat Rescue which are mostly sweet spiced herbals. This has a fruityness to it that’s really pleasant; the orange is just this gentle pop of vibrancy at the beginning of the sip, and then as some of the initial vibrancy fades it compliments the ginger and fennel really well. It was a wonderful presence in the sip!

I also ended up using the last third or so of the cup to dunk some soda bread in! My not boyfriend is Irish and very proud of his heritage, so he brought me some homemade Soda Bread because I’d never tried it before and apparently it’s super Irish or something like that? It was REALLY good/sweet but very dry, so the tea was a great compliment because it softened the otherwise dry mouthfeel and the orange and spice notes worked well with that sweet bread and great fruity/jammy quality from the mixed in fruits.

Yum yum!!!

Latte!

This one actually makes for a really unique and interesting latte. Since the apricot notes in the tea are kind of creamy already, the addition of the frothed up milk just pushes that whole flavour dynamic right over the edge. It’s super creamy, supple apricot but still with that sweetness/juicyness in the top notes. I still don’t really taste the ginger either, even as a latte. What I did taste was a HINT of that distinct stevia taste poking through just a little bit in the finish. I’d rather do without it, but it was still a very fun and unique latte regardless and I do very much enjoy the apricot taste.

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 regarding the teas, and not the company’s.

Iced, with a smidgen of honey.

This was very light and refreshing, which is what I want from an iced tea. Especially if I’m going to be drinking it at the beginning of my shift at work after standing outside in the sweltering heat, then spending a period of the time on the gross, equally hot bus. I just need something cool, and hydrating to start my shift off with!

Honey was a good choice in that it drew out some of the peachier notes in this tea and made those fruity elements pop a little bit more. It also, weirdly, did the same thing to the more herbaceous qualities of the blend. So, this was like very delicate, nuanced hay notes with a burst of peach at the top of the sip and then a burst of rosemary in the finish. So strange; but still really good.

TASTING NOTE 5000!!!

Thank you Veck for very thoughtfully sending this one to me – sorry it’s taken a while to get to most of the teas from the Slack Secret Santa exchange. They’ve not been unappreciated, though!

I did this one Gong Fu because that seemed the only respectable way to go about brewing it. The session was actually quite long; something like 12-15 infusions. However, I really only took notes for the first four or so before my laptop died and I finished the rest of the session jot note free. That was weeks ago, and unfortunately I’m struggling A LOT to remember the specifics of the other infusions apart from just feeling really, really tea drunk overall. It was a good session though.

Anyway, here are the notes that I DID take:

Started w. a ten second rinse and a rest…

Infusion One/Ten Seconds
- Mineral, dark cocoa, molasses, dates, earth
- LOTS of earth

Infusion Two/Fifteen Seconds
- Super murky and opaque liquor
- Dark, dank wet earth and mushrooms/dark cocoa
- Mineral, undergrowth and date undertones
- Saltier/umami finish!?

Infusion Three/Fifteen Seconds
- The same but sweeter?
- Has this lingering ‘honey nut’/grainy kind of thing going for it
- It’s hard to describe really, reminds me of cereal sort of though?

Infusion Four/Twenty Seconds
- Ditto, but somewhat roasty/woody too

Infusion Five/Twenty Five Seconds
- Very lingering mouthfeel and taste
- That honey/nut/grainy kind of cereal quality is REALLY strong/intense
- Also all kinds of earthy
- The Qi/Tea Drunkeness is definitely beginning to hit me as well…
- Still sort of reminds me of dates and mushrooms too…

And that is where the laptop died and I stopped taking notes.

Honestly, though? This was a GOOD session, but also a very weird one filled with a lot of more abstract flavours and, consequently, flavour descriptions…

Iced tea.

I can’t taste the cola in this one anymore; just lime and linden leaf. Plus, even those two flavours are quite mild/subdued. Basically, this tea is HARDCORE showing its age and isn’t super enjoyable anymore…

Finishing it off is definitely gonna be a total chore.

It seems like everyone goes through a Forever Nuts phase. I know I did.

One of the weirdest, but also most commonly occurring things about working at DAVIDsTEA is seeing practically dozens of people, every day, still going through their Forever Nuts phase. Like, the way this tisane travels from person to person from sheer word of mouth is completely INSANE. It’s like the HPV of tisanes.

I mean, just the other day someone came into the store looking for “Something like this Forever Nuts tea my coworker keeps talking about” not even realizing we were the tea company that sells that exact tea. So, I feel like it’s occasionally my duty to pay homage to that Forever Nuts phase and drink the damn tea every now and then just to stay refreshed on the flavour profile. Someone’s gotta take one for the team, right?

And thus, I drank a Forever Nuts latte the other night on shift.

It looks like strawberry milk, it tastes like apple pie. Still fairly good, probably just a bit overhyped though. Oh well, consider me refreshed and my duty done.

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 regarding the teas, and not the company’s.

Thanks for the sample VariaTea!

I don’t know how in the world I managed to miss this one when it first came out! Cranberry teas!? I’m pretty well always down for a cranberry tea – I just love them so much. Plus, VariaTea isn’t kidding when she says this one has a lot of cranberry – they’re HUGE and the bag is just packed with them.

I tried this one iced, I think largely because I didn’t realize quite how strong the spice notes would actually be. It was still very good, but I expected more brightness from the fruit and a softer, warming spice finish and my experience was that it was largely dry cinnamon and allspice notes in a very robust way with some gentler apple and cranberry notes in the tail end of the sip and aftertaste. Pretty well the reverse from what I had anticipated. Also, a bit of a honeyed woody kind of taste from the base tea.

None of that actually tasted bad but had I realize that’s what the flavour ratio was going to be like I definitely would have chosen to make this into a hot cup instead. Plus, regardless, I think I’d enjoy just a bit more brightness and forward flavour from the cranberry. Still, it was a tasty tea overall!

Pineapple Bacon Tea!

I still love this blend, a lot. Sure it’s not one I break out on a regular basis to enjoy a cup of because, lets face it, it’s weird as fuck and not one of those flavours that just goes along with any old mood. However, it’s a fun and quirky treat when I do have it.

That was sort of the intent when I drank it last week – I just wanted something different and this is arguably the weirdest tea in my whole stash. Though, I feel like I should point out that I do have a tea, also from 52Teas, that is LITERALLY called “Something Different”. So that is a thing…

It’s basically savory pineapple bubblegum, in essence – and I enjoy that.

Try as I might, I could NOT get my twelve year old sister to try any of it though.

Important question for 52Teas though – I really want to share this one with someone who’s REALLY allergic to apples. Keeping in mind that cross contamination is always a risk, I just wanted to clarify that there are no apples in this blend? I know it’s not a listed ingredient, but since ‘natural flavours’ is a bit vague I just wanted to double check that those natural flavours are apple free? Figured I’d ask, ’cause you never know…

Also, just throwing an idea out there – cherry tulsi black tea? Maybe with a bit of cinnamon or other light (non ginger) spices? I’d be hella on board with that.