Iced, in my tea press.
Speaking purely to the store I work at, this has by far been the standout favourite of the three citrus teas from the Freshly Squeezed collection this summer. I remember feeling a little underwhelmed by it myself when I first tried it, but I haven’t really revisited it at all since initially trying it and it’s so popular that I thought I’d give it another go just to reassess my original thoughts…
I actually made this one to the specifications of another coworker who’s REALLY in love with it. She drinks it this way at least every other shift, so I figured if it’s good enough for her to keep coming back to it I should probably give it a shot. So here’s what she does:
Two perfect spoons of tea leaf, steeped at the normal temperature in the normal water amount. However, instead of four minutes she lets it steep for six and to sweetened it she uses two matcha spoons worth of the strawberry kiwi cocktail sugar from earlier in the summer…
Personally, I actually really liked the addition of the cocktail sugar. I was a bit skeptical it would be too sweet at first but I think it really amps up the strawberry notes overall, and the kiwi is really complimentary to (obviously) the strawberry, but the lemon as well. The fact it compliments the lemon isn’t surprising though – Kiwi’s Big Adventure was a PHENOMENAL green tea and it was basically kiwi/lemon.
However the tea itself…
Again, I don’t find it bad. I just find the flavour combination really underwhelming/run of the mill. Maybe it’s because I’ve just tried so many teas at this point, that this is like my sixth or seventh berry lemonade tea. So, it makes sense I’d be a touch more critical – right? The lemon itself is still so light/watery though – even with the extra steep time! I want more overall body, and a bright citrus flavour that’s going to slap me, from the inside out as I take a sip. This is… almost gentle.
And overall it’s just the gentleness that really, really leaves me going “meh”. I mean, that TOTALLY works for some people – obviously. It’s been super popular, so clearly I’m the minority. It’s just not quite what I wanted out of it, is all.
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.