Well, don’t ask me why it’s so early ‘cause I don’t know the answer, but DT’s first Winter launch was today! Five winter teas – three new, two returning. It seems a little weird to me that we’ve launched them before Halloween, but oh well.
Personally, that meant I got to grab the teas I wanted/try everything before going on vacation which I’m pretty happy about. I was worried when I booked my vacation that the collection would launch while I was on vacation and I wouldn’t be able to try everything right away.
This one is a new herbal tea – I think this year’s collection is a little herbal heavy, and personally I would have liked to see a flavour like this on a rooibos or a white tea base but I’ll take it as is. I mean, I have no choice not to. It smells very familiar as dry leaf; kind of like the super popular Caramel Corn blend from DT that’s made an appearance the last few years. It’s fruitier though; which makes sense since this blend has sour cherry, raspberry, and elderberry in it. That’s also weird to me; I mean when I think shortbread I think buttery flavour notes – not fruit. You also can’t latte this one, I think probably because of the sour cherry in the blend. I’m foreseeing a lot of people disappointed that they can’t get this one as a latte ’cause in theory it sounds like it should be really good…
Steeped up I find myself a little underwhelmed by the flavour. It’s not bad at all, but it’s not exactly strong and not what I would have expected given the name. The bulk of the flavour is almond/hazelnut and in that regard it reminds me a little of Forever Nuts, especially since this also has cinnamon and apple undertones. It’s got caramel notes though, albeit light ones. The more I sipped on it, the more I kind of started viewing it as a mix of Forever Nuts and Caramel Corn – with one big exception though.
The cherry.
I don’t exactly understand why it’s in this blend!? It’s a very strong flavour, as strong as the caramel for sure – and it feels a little out of place? I mean, I like cherry and it doesn’t taste bad but it doesn’t fit with the rest of the flavour profile that the ingredient come together to form. If you removed it, I think this would flow together more uniformly and be a more accurate flavour representation. Those are just my thoughts though; and the rest of the staff present during our initial tasting of the new teas seemed to like it quite a bit. I’m interested to see the sort of feedback we’ll get from customers though; it’s always interesting seeing if my opinion lines up with general crowd reception of a tea…
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.
Ugh, I hear you about the early holiday stock – we were getting Christmas stuff in mid September where I work at Chapters bookstore.
Oh wow! I know retail has no chill, but that’s SO early…