This was my summer treat to myself! I absolutely love pineapple, in almost any form, and I also really enjoy coconut too – so it’s no surprise that Pina Colada is a favourite flavour of mine.
The dry leaf smells exactly like it should: a pina colada! The smell of the pineapple and coconut is really quite strong, and you can’t really smell any of the other ingredients. The little sugar hearts are a cute touch as well, and it’s hard for me to resist picking both them and the pineapple bits out of the tin for eating.
I drank a lot of this iced over the summer – it’s just delicious and really flavourful, and SO refreshing. I really should make the effort to go to my local DAVIDsTEA to refill my tin before they run out of this one! The leaf in my tin is pretty sparse and although I probably won’t be drinking this one as much now that it’s getting to be fall, I still want to have the OPTION of drinking it.
This is actually my first time drinking it hot, and I’m not totally sure what to expect – this tea is delicious cold brewed but I somehow just can’t picture drinking a Pina Colada hot. It just seems so… Contradictory.
Steeping, it’s a very sweet and aromatic pina colada smell with some creaminess to it that can probably be attributed to the coconut. I think I can very lightly smell the apple, but it’s not a strong smell and it’s mostly buried under the very dominating pineapple and coconut.
I gave this a long steep time: the full seven minutes. There’s a lot of flavour in my first few sips (well, more gulps really). Pineapple is the first flavour – very sweet and slightly tart. The pineapple then develops into a very full bodied coconut with a HIGH level of creaminess. This is leaving my mouth watering, but I still feel very refreshed. It’s a very smooth tea with light floral notes from the rose, safflower, and marigold.
Even though I prefer not to add anything to my tea, I bet with a bit of rum or a splash of cream this would be heavenly – maybe worthy of a perfect ‘100’. To my list of things to try out, I’m adding both of those additions to this tea! I’d also love to try adding some leaves from DT’s Buttered Rum. Has anyone else done that yet?
As a hot tea, I honestly like this as much (if not more) than I do as a cold tea. Probably an unpopular opinion, I know. I think I’m going to attribute that to the fact that I prefer hot tea in general. I really, REALLY need to buy more of this.
EDIT: Got a really good second steep of this one! I’m not really sure how long it was steeping – I lost track of time. It was definitely longer than 10 minutes though. This steep tastes nearly identical to the previous cup, but with a very sharp note of tart and sour apple on the end of the sip.
