New Collection!
This last year, I’ve been pretty excited for most of the collections that have come out. However, I think this collection is probably the one I’ve been most fascinated by thus far: the variety of ingredients/flavours is just really interesting to me and I think there’s a lot going on with many of these herbal blends in particular that separates them from the other herbal teas to come out this year.
For my first round of tasting, I tried all of the teas iced in store with our staff. I kind of like staff tastings a lot, because you get a lot of really interesting and often different observations from everyone that I don’t think you’d necessarily get otherwise. From the perspective of someone who works at DAVIDsTEA it’s good professionally because it gives you more to talk about with customers because you can draw from not just your own tastes but the tastes of others. But also, it broadens what I’m able to taste myself.
Like, many of our staff were a little thrown by the idea of rosemary in a tea blend – but I LOVE teas with savory elements, and for me it wasn’t that weird so I got to share my experience with savory teas with the rest of our staff, and I think that was beneficial for them. Personally, I actually wanted MORE rosemary flavour: while it was present, I thought it was actually very light compared to the rest of the flavour. It’s certainly a nice touch, though – adds an interesting/unique element and gives this a quality that REALLY separates it from DTs other strawberry teas.
And speaking of the strawberry: it’s nice! I found it a little sweet, honestly but the vibrancy is great and I think it’s a really juicy flavour overall. A coworker actually pointed out that it’s really similar to the strawberry flavour in Strawberry Rhubarb Parfait and I think that’s definitely true – the key difference, for me, is just that it’s A LOT less tart. I definitely prefer that. Finally, there’s a very interesting creaminess to the blend. Now, normally I don’t like the artificial vanilla flavour that DT likes to use, but this time around I didn’t mind it at all.
I think the difference MAY be that it’s not just artificial vanilla flavour though; it’s a combination of vanilla pods and then natural and artificial flavours. Anyway; something was different for me. I liked that it was more a part of the undertone of the flavour too: start off with sweet, juicy strawberry and apple notes and then transition into more of a strawberries and cream/campino candy kind of flavour. It flowed nicely, for me at least.
Overall? This wasn’t my favourite or least favourite tea from this collection. I did like it enough/have enough curiosity to buy the sachet version of it though. I have enough loose leaf right now; but not many decent sachet options so I thought that this was something that I wouldn’t mind having around as a sachet…
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.
