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Ok, so I picked Cranberry Pear for my tea on our tea date but funnily enough Tyrell ended up opting for my second favourite DAVIDsTEA black blend of all time through no pressuring of my own.

We narrowed down his tea (because he was quite overwhelmed by “The Wall”) by asking questions.

“Well, are you feeling caffeine or no caffeine? Caffeine? Ok – ignore anything in red or yellow tin. Not too much caffeine though? Ok – so nothing in the purple tins…”

“Sweet like chocolate or fruity? Fruity? Ok great. Which fruit? Berries? Ok, choice A, B, or C? Ok Blueberry Jam it is!”

He really liked it though. Actually, he said he was shocked how much he liked it; he was expecting slightly blueberry flavoured hot water. And then he sheepishly admitted that most of the tea he’s ever had has been Tetley. Well, never again. No more of that shit. Understandably this was amazing in contrast to fucking Tetley.

But yeah, this is good. Glad he liked it because I like this one a lot too.

So today was my second date with Tyrell and because we already have a third date planned that revolves heavily around his interests we decided to make this one more so geared around mine (which kinda didn’t seem super fair to me because our first date was really focused around my interests too since we went and watched Spiderman 2 which was really much more my thing than his).

So the first half of the date was a tea date! We decided to go to DAVIDsTEA because I wanted to pick up another infuser, and because he already knew the way there. I’m slightly appalled though; he has two good friends (Gwyn/Lucas) who both work/ed for DT and he had NEVER been to DT before. That seems shameful to me.

It was fun though; Gwyn was working today so he got to talk to his friend and I got to be properly introduced (I do know the DT employees fairly well as a customer, but it was different being introduced as a friend) another hard core tea lover. We had a great conversation about flavoured matcha. It was funny because she mentioned a regular customer had dropped off some Eggnog Matcha from Red Leaf Tea and the employees had all loved it and I got to gush and be all “THAT WAS TOTALLY ME!”. I feel like that earned me good points ;)

So I shared with her my favourite Red Leaf flavours with her (she was leaning towards an order with Coconut, French Vanilla, Key Lime, and Bananas & Cream) and we dished on neat ways to enjoy matcha. Funnily enough, later into the date (at home) I wound up packing up a few Red Leaf teas for her anyway…

But yeah; I struggled choosing between a familiar favourite or something new. Obviously I went familiar although I did make it a latte, but I also kinda did new too because I picked up 10g of Ginseng Oolong in addition to my infuser. Tyrell was baffled at how much “tea hardware” (as he put it) exists. Not sure why that was surprising, to him, but it was kinda cute.

This was awesome as usual!

Sipdown (163/169)!

Finished this one from VariaTEA off in my timolino with a little milk added in to it; pretty good if I do say so myself! Actually, it was a significant step up from the nail polish remover/cotton ball incident the first time around.

If I had to describe this experience I think I’d use words like “Nectar” or “Ambrosia” because it really was creamy, silky honey notes with very faint rooibos taste and a milky chocolate. Yeah, milk and no nail polish remover is the way to go with this one. I’ll raise my rating a bit! But I wont seek this out again, most likely.

And now a brief interlude on my mass stream of backlog to slip in a funny “work” story because that’s what I do whenever I’d had this one…

First a little history: on my Mom’s side of the family I have three Aunts and one Uncle all of which I’m fairly close with. I grew up seeing them all during the holidays and we got birthday cards from them and things like that too. One of them, my Aunt Nancy, lives in Saskatoon – the same city I’m in now. As far as I’m concerned, she’s my only family in the city. We’re not terribly close (I’m closer to other Aunts/Uncles) but close enough she had me over for Christmas.

Conversely my Dad has TEN living siblings (and two that are deceased) whom I am not close with AT ALL. I can’t even name more than four of them, and I’ve only met one of them (and definitely not recently). Yet, my Dad likes to go on about them as if I have any semblance of who these people are. I don’t.

So to the story: I was at work on till for the day, and this older woman who I have NO visual recollection of what so ever comes through my till and buys about $50 in fake yellow flower garlands. I work at a Dollar Store; that’s a lot of garlands so regardless this would be a memorable encounter. But the whole fucking time she’s just locked eyes on my while I scan stuff in; and she’s not blinking or breaking eye contact which is very disconcerting. I’m thinking she’s gonna be one of those crotchety older folk who make you triple count all of their bulk orders in case you’re like a dollar off.

Instead she asks my name as I’m finishing the transaction. I meekly tell her, thinking she’s gonna go complain about something stupid to my manager but not wanting to get in shit for lying to this woman. But what she did totally through me off; she very loudly boomed “I KNEW IT! I’M YOUR AUNT HELEN!”. My face must have been priceless or just very very vacant because until yesterday I didn’t even know I had an Aunt Helen or that she lived in the same city as me.

But weirder; how did she recognize me? We’ve never met before! And then further more she had all these weird details about me that she felt like sharing, and only like half were accurate. So thought I’d share that story with you all. I figured it was worth sharing with someone.

But yeah; Aunt Helen. Who’d have known. It was certainly weird.

Sipdown (164/170)!

Getting close to finishing off the backlog. Now I just have the teas from yesterday and today; and I didn’t do a whole ton of tea drinking yesterday anyway so that should be fast enough to catch up on. May have to log today’s teas tomorrow though; I’m pretty damn exhausted right now.

This is a long time ago sample sent from the delightful Rosehips that I sadly just recently got to. I made it up as a cold brew, and actually did set aside enough leaf for a hot cup but I ended up giving that portion of the leaf to Tyrell (the guy I’m dating) to give to Lucas. Lucas is one of his two friends who worked/works at DAVIDsTEA – in tasting notes he has been referred to as “Hot DT Guy” but given that I now know and am dating someone who knows him pretty personally I think we’re gonna transition to referring to him by his actual name. Also, he no longer works for DT so the previous moniker isn’t super accurate anyway.

But yeah; it’s sorta a longish story why I sent teas to Lucas/his girlfriend (who does work at DT) Gwyn – and I was gonna share it in my tasting notes for teas from today/my date when I picked out selective info to share with you all; but might as well share it here right? Sure. Yeah.

So while we were at my place, I somehow ended up getting in a fight with Lucas over our apparently drastically varying tea tastes though text message via Tyrell. Lucas was making some pretty wild claims and I sorta (ok, pretty much flat out) called him an idiot who didn’t know good tea. But in an endearing way? He pretty much said that he had never had a DAVIDsTEA blend he disliked; and I know he worked for the company but I call MAJOR BULLSHIT on that. Even his girlfriend, Gwyn, admitted to me today that she didn’t like the newest Chocolate Macaroon tea because it was too sweet. Like come on; don’t bullshit a tea drinker. It’s one thing to push things/promote DT blends to the inexperienced shoppers who come in the store and don’t know better – but I clearly know better.

But then, he said that he LOVES hibiscus; so I went on this spiel that result in me feeding my kinda sorta boyfriend straight hibiscus to prove to him his friend is an idiot (Tyrell thought it was nasty so point accomplished) and on top of that I put together a small sampler of really nice teas for Tyrell to bring to Lucas/Gwyn to show them fancy, super awesome quality shit. That included my hot cup’s worth of this, some Yunnan Sourching, Butiki, Mandala, Dammann Freres, and a few flavoured matchas from Red Leaf.

Take that Lucas!

But yeah; back to the point of this tea and my cold brew and what I thought of it. Honestly, in smell it reminded me a ton of Des Roses et Des Bonbons from Camellia Sinensis – but that’s obviously from the rose. I really wanted gentle rose water and apples from the taste; but let me tell you the rose in this was not subtle.

This was definitely too floral for my liking and I really, really wanted more apple – no, scratch that – any apple flavour from this but it just wasn’t happening.

So, maybe this was a bad one to pick to prove my point to Lucas (at the point I’m not even sure what that point was?) but regardless much thanks again to Rosehips for the kind sample. I was happy to get to try this even if I didn’t totally love it.

Sometimes when you’re sick you just need one good bagged tea to wind down and feel much better; and so I made this one up because of the intoxicating and soothing vanilla creamer aroma! It did the trick; before I knew it I felt less stressed and tense and I was stretched out on the couch/my bed watching episodes of Firefly.

Because of the whole sick thing I opted to not drink down another Firefly blend though; everything I had tasted thus far in the day had been nasty as hell so I didn’t want to waste a precious character tea when I felt rotten. Glad I made the decision, I think; although at this point I’m down to the character blends I’m much less excited about though.

Made in my timolino; I don’t know why I thought this would be a good idea what with the whole being sick thing, but it very obviously wasn’t. I took one sip of it and the salt made everything in my stomach churn in all the wrong ways. So icky! So much blah!

So dumped it. I don’t particularly feel that wasteful about it though; I’ve had this tons of times and am working on finishing it off anything given that it’s not that spectacular regardless. I feel like I have ups and downs with this one though; some cups are really special and others are really not.

Sipdown (165/171)!

So I cold brewed this to sip it down which I kinda regretted doing as soon as it was set up and in the fridge because I’ve had this cold brewed and I didn’t really love it nearly as much as I do hot. But I wanted to give it another chance cold brewed.

Little did I know, I was going to wake up feeling like death and everything I drank that day (two days ago?) was going to taste like shit anyway. Seriously, I woke up and I felt HORRIBLE for no discernible reason. This got dumped so damn quickly because all it tastes like was bitter and it made me so sick feeling.

Which was a terrible way to finish this blend off. I mistreated you horribly dearest refreshing cucumber blend! Many apologies.

But for realsies, I actually feel a nice sense of accomplishment in finishing off one of my oldest 52Teas blends! Woot! Go me! I need to sipdown large quantities more often; it’s a good feeling!

Sipdown (166/172)!

So I’ve now finished Firefly; I absolutely adored it and I of course hate where it ended. I still need to watch Serenity, but I’m going to wait until I’ve finished off all the character blends first and then finish this kind sampler from VariaTEA off the the Serenitea blend and Serenity movie. Something about that just seems, I don’t know, “Serendipitous”? Just a touch.

However, when I had this one I had not finished it off yet. I think I was on episode nine to be more specific? I feel like I definitely got to know more about Simon’s character in those last few episodes though; especially in regards to his relationship with Kaylee. I wonder if I’d think this was more accurate to the character now? Although I thought it was a good fit before; I just couldn’t pinpoint why. Maybe I could now? Not the peaches really; but more the ginger.

I hate ginger, so personally the presence of that in this one was a bad sign; as well as the peach; one thing I hate and one I’m fickle towards didn’t look too promising. Wasn’t actually so bad though. I think the gingerbread was a nice touch for the character though; to me gingerbread says “comfort” and the holidays/family and that seems like a good way to reflect Simon’s relationship with River.

But yeah taste; (I feel like I’m jumping around; also the j and the h keys are way too close together) I didn’t dislike it so that’s good – I feared I might. But I wasn’t in love either. I think overall I really just felt like I could love it but I’d need to try it again to really pull my mind together (there’s a horrible pun somewhere in there…) and I can’t see that happening soon.

But here’s what I typed in my notes:

- Lots of ginger initially (WHY DOES THIS BLENDER USE SO MUCH GING’)
- As it cooled more peaches/cream and molasses (Gingerbread?)
- Oolong held its own with the black

There ya’ have it. That’s my very jumbled take on this one.

Had this as an evening tea a few night ago; it was it’s usual decadent, spectacular nutty self! I’ve working towards a sipdown on it right now, but I absolutely have plans to pick up at least another 50g more next time I’m in Regina.

It’s just so damn good, but I could use the extra cupboard space just for the time being.