17215 Tasting Notes
Gongfu!
This is one of the teas that I picked up from Toronto Tea Festival this past weekend, and I’m so glad I did because it’s one of the better milk oolongs that I’ve tried in quite a while. Very soft, silky mouthfeel with rich but not heavy or too aggressive notes of fresh cream, butter, coconut oil, and a really fragrant bouquet of florals like orchid, lily, and lilac. It brewed for quite some time before finally tapping out, with a very consistent profile across infusions. Definitely a warm and cozy way to start the day!
Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DFwAAIiyi_G/?img_index=1
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MNfKh9EXlQ&ab_channel=PeterMcPoland
Grandpa Style!
I can’t help but get caught up in the beautiful soft caramel colour of the fuzzy leaves that make up this uniquely pressed tea that sits somewhere in the no man’s land between white and black teas. Today, I’m struggling to describe the flavour as anything more than just comforting. Almost like a liquid version of the maillard effect where the soup is “brown” tasting in an almost equally sweet and savory way, with a more medium-ish bodied liquor was a touch of upfront astringency before finishing smooth and coating on the throat. Butterscotch and broth. Caramelized olive brine. So weird. So good.
Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DFyWPedSB3v/
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4m3xmFKxwo&ab_channel=CardinalBloom-Topic
Cold Brew!
Currently sipping on this one tonight while I crack out these tasting notes. I obviously had to stop my Momo’s booth at the festival because I’m always so, so impressed with her flavoured green tea blends. In fact, her sencha is the only sencha I actively go out of my way to try because the quality is just soooooo good that I can’t turn my nose up at it even as an incredibly picky person when it comes to green tea.
I realized though that I owned every flavoured except for this one, which is her signature. So obviously I rectified that. I knew it was peach flavoured because momo means peach in Japanese, but I didn’t realize until I was setting up my cold brew this morning that it also has rhubarb in it. Kind of a game changer for me personally as a bit of a self professed rhubarb slut.
Sipping on it now it’s exactly what I want it to be. Very, very smooth and silky with buttery, unctuous notes of sencha couple with fragrant, floral and sweet Japanese-style white peach and just a little bit of fleeting tartness from the rhubarb. I’m finding it really well balanced and refreshing. There are certainly other teas from Momo that I’d reach for over this one like the melon sencha or budo sencha (ie. the grape one), but they’re just all soooo, so good!
Had this at work today and it was not bad! I didn’t really remember it as something that I’d enjoyed before, so my expectations were lower and maybe that factored in slightly. Quite hojicha forward but I enjoyed that toasty roasted cereal/grains goodness a lot, and even didn’t mind the subtle brassy/mineral twang that accompanied it. The coffee notes are present but very cream-laced and somewhat alcoholic in a fake-y kind of way. I get where the tiramisu direction comes in though, but it could be a little richer and/or more authentic.
Sipdown (2791)!
Finished this one off at work today and really, really enjoyed how smooth and jammy the mug was. Full bodied from the black tea, and with a surprising punch of cinnamon. I think there was A LOT at the bottom of my bag, though. But the star of the show continued to be that wonderfully thick, cranberry jelly type of note. Probably best not to keep hoarding this one, but I will miss it. Maybe we’ll meet again in a future year’s countdown box or something like that!
Sipdown (2792)!
I was excited to see Nepal Tea Collective at the Toronto Tea Festival this year – they were really kind to speak to, and so generous with their sampling as well. I ended up getting their 14 tea sampler box as well as a box of one of their reserve teas.
It’s going to take me a while to get through the box, but I wanted to start with this one because the inclusion of Szechuan peppers was really fascinating to me. I’ve had two or three teas now with them included and it’s always a really distinct taste and mouthfeel that I adore. Westholme Tea’s “Boom” lapsang blend that includes them is maybe my favourite example of this.
Opening up the tea packet, the dry leaf smelled incredible. So fresh and aromatic with really distinct, lively notes of cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, and citrus. It made me nose tickle/burn, but in the good kind of way! Steeped up, those three spices definitely still come out the strongest initially without a whole lot of the turmeric. It’s also more of a hot ginger than an earthy one, which in this context I enjoyed alongside the very aromatic, soothing and slightly cooling notes of the cinnamon and cardamom.
Immediately I felt the numbing sensation of the szechuan peppers with my first sip, though it started light before getting quite tingly and intense near the end of the cup. If you’ve never felt it before, it really does feel like the food/liquid version of static electricity. There’s a citrusy note to it as well, which was doubled down on by the sort of grassier citronella-type taste of the lemongrass. I did kind of feel like the aftertaste was a little soapy though.
You definitely lose the notes of the white tea pretty completely, though I think it probably is adding mouthfeel. Without the white tea I think the liquor would be very thin feeling. Still, I wish I got a little more tea and maybe just a bit less spice? It’s such a unique blend though and that mouth sensation for the szechuan is something I feel like everyone should try in a tea at least once.
Sipdown (2793)!
Finishing off the other sachet of this tea I was gifted because after bringing in so many new teas this weekend I kind of needed the easy sipdown win. Honestly, this felt great on my incredibly raw throat if nothing else. The flavour was tart but with a soothing cinnamon spice undertone and some very lively citrus notes too. It’s a nice tea, but nothing I’ll particularly miss.
I drank this one yesterday, but actually not as a latte despite the name. Instead I added a ton of the powder to a bottle of ice water and shook it all up until I had a beautiful, soft pink bottle of iced tea. The flavour is incredibly delicate so it still barely tasted like anything despite how much I included but I did get a little bit of that lightly floral and sweet cherry blossom note on the backend of the sip. More than anything, this was just refreshing though.
Thankfully I took yesterday off work as a comp day for the time I’d spent working over the weekend because when I got up in the morning my voice was so shot. I truly sounded like a dying toad.
I used that extra time off for rest/recovery, but also to add my grossly shameful Tea Festival shopping haul into Steepster. Plus I drank a lot of tea – including this one which was something I’d sampled at the festival and liked enough to bring a bag home with me. It was a nice tea to sip on during the lazy morning of logging teas into the datebase.
I wanted to check out Selicious Teas last year at the festival (it was their first year attending) but their booth was so packed I never got a chance to wiggle in. This year I was looking before the show floor actually opened to the public so I had a quiet environment to sample in. This one stood out to me because the cinnamon was so smooth, without either being cloying/sweet or drying and woody. I also found that the tea had a really pleasant custard-like flavour. Not vanilla/cream which would give this a sort of cinnamon bun profile, but specifically the type of golden custard you might have in a flan. It felt kind of unique in that way!
After I’d done my shopping, I spent the entire rest of Sunday at the festival working the DT booth. I was really there to be our on site tea expert and answer any questions the attendees has not just about what we were sampling but any of our teas in general. Though, I spent most of the day doing live cuppings of different teas and talking about them with anyone who wanted to try them. We switched it up at different points of the day, but the teas I was primarily sampling were our Jade Tieguanyin, Simply Maple Breakfast (the SimplyNailogical collab tea) and… this one!
It’s fair to say that the cat’s out of the bag now, and that sometime this March we’ll be formally releasing our second manoomin based tea with the lovely folks at Tea Horse! We debuted it at the festival as a sneak peak, though! I also drank quuuuiiittte a lot of it myself over the coarse of the afternoon. Have to stay hydrated, after all! I want to do my proper write up with the full story of how we came up with this flavour profile, what it tastes like, the giveback partner for sales of the tea (because it’s different from last year’s partner for Manoomin Maple), and just all the lovely details I normally share – but I’m going to wait until the tea formally launches online/in stores first.
For now, suffice to say that I think people were really receptive to this blend and that a lot of people who were familiar with Manoomin Maple from previous years we’ve highlighted it at the festival also seemed to really, really enjoy the flavour of this one and find that commonality with the roasted wild rice.
Also, this is my last tasting note from at the festival or really from the weekend in Toronto in general! As things wrapped up, we did our tear down and then rushed to the airport just in time to have a shitty airport meal of cheese and chips before flying home. I think I literally went all of Sunday only eating a donut, a mochi ball, three cheese strings, and half a bag of sour cream & onion chips – so truly I have to credit caffeine and adrenaline for getting me through it all.
I slept so soundly when I got back to my apartment.
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.
