Home sick today – woke up with a really sore throat and no voice, so basically just resting and drinking warm teas today. However, it’s a good opportunity to get my tasting notes up for the three new Halloween teas that launched yesterday!! Here’s the list of what came out:
- Deep Purple (New)
- Forbidden Root (New)
- Eye of Newt (New – Web Exclusive)
- Monster Mash (Updated/Returning)
- Stormy Night (Returning – Web Exclusive)
- Pumpkin Pie Matcha (Returning – Web Exclusive)
I’m not going to put up new tasting notes for the returning teas because they aren’t different – save for Monster Mash which is an updated version with new blue/purple witch-y themed Sprinkles. However, even for that one the taste isn’t at all different so I’m not going to write anything for that one either…
So, Deep Purple!! This is kind of a neat tea – we’re classing it as a black tea on our tea wall, but it’s actually a Kenyan Purple tea; of course there’s no “purple tea” category for us to slot this into though, so this is the closest one it can get categorized in. I’m not personally a huge fan of most purple teas, I think the taste can be a bit underwhelming even if they’re conceptually very cool and usually quite striking looking. It’s almost more of a novelty thing? However, that said…
I’m a HUGE fan of making tea accessible – including teas that are not highly commercially available or that the average person isn’t aware of and purple tea 100% fits that bill! So I love that we’re taking a purple tea and making it our star for Halloween – it’s a neat way to allow people to try something more unique. Is it strongly Halloween feeling to me? Ehhhh… It’s a bit of a stretch; but I suppose we’ve got the colour changing properties of both the purple tea and the butterfly pea flower at play so that gives some kind of tie in; sort of like we’ve done in the past with Magic Potion…
So what does this tea taste like!? To make it simple, lemon and blueberries! I actually really like how we’ve approached the flavour – most people will likely add lemon juice to this tea already to colour change it, so having a lemon note as the primary note just strengthens that element and makes sense to me. What I like about it is that this isn’t an overly sweet lemon note; it’s not bitter or acrid/tart/sour but it’s not exactly candy lemon either. Just a refreshing and naturally sweet lemon, maybe tinged with a little bit of a tropical pineapple note!? The blueberry is also pretty mellow, but a bit sweeter than the lemon – not as strong overall though, especially if you’re adding lemonade to this. It’s a nice medley, and a overall a smooth and fruity tea!
What I like about this blend is that it’s sweet but not the usual DT level of sweet – that makes sense to me for people who like fruity tea but not at that Frozen Raspberry type of level, but it also means that if you DO like sweet teas like that you can add sweetener or lemonade and still achieve that flavour profile.
Debating whether or not I want some of this for myself – I’ve actually only had it hot/room temp at this point but I imagine it’d be so nice iced or cold brewed so I might nab a bit for experimentation…
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.
Feel better soon!