16396 Tasting Notes
Evening cuppa enjoyed with family while watching The Danish Girl; holy shit that is both a beautiful and incredibly frustrating and hard to watch movie! Tea itself was very good though; I’m regretting not buying a little bit more of it because I think this is something I could burn through really quickly if I let myself – I’ll try to have more restraint than that though. It’s a little more just straight up creamy custard than eggnog for me right now; not enough spices to capture that element and just a bit too much sharp sweetness/tang from the pineapple. Still yummy!
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.
Iced pitcher of tea!
I feel like it’s probably hard to believe that I’m only just now experiencing SBTs for the first time, but back when there were super popular on Steepster I was much, much more interested in the 52Teas side of things and kind of intimidated by the idea of making so much iced tea at once. Plus, I wasn’t really a fan of Frank so when the two companies separated I had no reason to support him…
This was only ok; I mean, props to it for being iced black tea that’s smooth as all hell without ANY astringency but the ‘Citrus Blast’ is a lot more like a ‘Citrus Whisper’ in my opinion. Basically you’re drinking smooth, malty and floral black tea with traces of lemon in the undertones – like the much more mild and subdued older brother of Nestea or Brisk bottled, sweetened ‘iced tea’. It’s fine – we served it up with some sliced starfruit in the glasses and it was refreshing. Just not mind blowing.
Sipdown (514)!
Whipped this one up as a cold brew, and then kind of forgot about it for a few days. Even still it wound up being very tasty – essentially the mirror image of the sweet, smooth and juicy raspberry and orange flavour notes I got to experience with my hot cup of it only cooled down. Arguably less grassy, too? This is totally something I’d reorder in the summer; it’s one of the better chilled natural raspberry flavoured teas I’ve had in what feels like ages.
I was kind of surprised how much I wound up liking this one; the flavour was totally something I was very skeptical about and initial reviews didn’t seem promising to me. The dry leaf has a fascinating aroma to it – boozey peppermint schnapps with an almost vanilla pudding/tapioca kind of undertone? The taste is similar to the smell in that the mint is strong and very boozey/schnapps tasting but that weird pudding kind of aroma comes off as more of a smooth, vanilla/caramel custard type thing that’s a lot more appealing that minty tapioca pudding. Very accurate to the name, I think.
Drank this one on the way home from work, mostly because it was quick to prepare on the way out for the night because of the sachet format but also because I want to finish this one off sooner rather than later. I can’t really recall what I thought of this one when I first tasted it but I kind of got the feeling of ‘reverse’ deja vu this time when I was sipping on it; you know, like the sensation that nothing I was tasting in this cup lined up at all with my first impression. Mostly notes of toasted/grilled nuts, roastiness, a bit of a creamy quality, and then a VERY dill heavy finish…
Iced Latte Sipdown (515)!
Super happy to see Steepster back up and running; it’s such an integral part of my everyday routine that the absence of it is just kind of soul crushing. I found myself drinking excess amounts of tea (I mean, more than the usual excess) and just feeling lost not having a place to talk about it.
Now I have a massive queue built up though and so comes a challenge to myself; in order to get through this big queue of tasting notes I’m giving myself a MAXIMUM of three sentences to convey thoughts on the tea and challenging myself to be brief in regard to talking about each of them. Otherwise, if I carry on like normal, it’s going to take FOREVER to get through everything. So, starting… now!
This as a really sad sipdown for me because of how unique this tea is; I don’t really have any other ‘dessert’ oolong that kind of hit this level of nuanced, natural sweetness that don’t rely on chocolate. The iced latte was satisfying though; I was also eating coconut flavoured shortbread so I used the tea to dunk the shortbread and it was essentially like dunking coconut in sweet, custardy caramel milk. I’ll definitely order this one in the future, though!
Short and sweet morning Gong Fu session.
This was delightful and smooth; very fresh tasting with really natural and sweet jasmine notes. It didn’t stop there though, there was also some very, very light peach notes once the jasmine had mostly subsided and all throughout the session there were some lovely peony undertones also. Not much staying power; I think this was basically tapped out after around seven steeps. Stilled loved it though.
Sometimes it’s really nice having something thick, and full bodied to sip on but other times something fragile, and delicate like this tea is even better. It’s like opposite sides of the spectrum; and throw on some sweet love songs and break out the soft, pastel teaware and you’ve got yourself the perfect tea to unwind with!
Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/BevheAQlUhf/?taken-by=ros_strange
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNnNLBteKeo
Keeping this one simple, ’cause it was a simple flavour profile:
- Toss in a splash of chocolate agave
- Toss in a splash of milk
- Let ’er steep for a few minutes extra
What do you get? Tea that literally tastes like melted down Rolos. Really quite rich, but if that’s what you’re in the mood for then you can’t get more perfect than this.
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.
From lunch today; I needed something very quick to just sip on with my meal and most of the teas I have up in the kitchen today are things I more so want to drink without food pairings or just Gong Fu.
So, I stole a couple scoops of this from my mom’s stash and made up a mug of it topped with a scoop of vanilla gelato to cool it down and give it a richer vanilla/latte sort of feel and taste overall! My meal was actually very good, though definitely not the most thought out in terms of pairings. I went for a (vegetarian) hotdog topped with some goat cheese and cauliflower curry, fresh sliced starfruit and then of course my tea as well. The gelato made a world of difference; in the past I’ve found that this has an almost fruit loops like taste to it but that extra vanilla just removed any wonky fruit loops notes and general ‘thinness’ to the flavour and just pushed this into FULL London Fog kind of mode. So damn tasty!
Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/BetFrIwFvHc/?taken-by=ros_strange
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.
Sipdown (510)!
Many thanks to Kittenna for sending some of this my way! I was very excited to try it; Lupicia teas are certainly not the most convenient thing to get a hold of in Canada which is so sad because they’re generally SO GOOD. This one in particular really seemed like something I’d enjoy though; an oolong with pineapple and guava!
Honestly, the most interesting thing about this tea for me may actually have been the super unique looking sugar sprinkles/crystals in the blend. I’m usually pretty neutral about sprinkles in my tea, but these things were damn stunning! I did take a photo for my Instagram and I think you can kind of see them in the photo? But very unique, for sure.
Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/Beq_ogoF7vC/?taken-by=ros_strange
Flavour wise… This was pretty good!
I wasn’t actually sure if I liked it at first because it does come off initially as very highly floral, and those notes can be a little overwhelming right off the bat. However, once I had kind of acclimated to that wave of floral top notes I was really able to get into the rest of the profile and deeply appreciate the tropical fruit notes. This one is certainly pineapple flavoured – that much would be very obvious even if I didn’t know what was in the blend prior to steeping it up. It is weird though because it was a very sweet, and almost candied tasting pineapple but at the same time had a lot of the freshness and natural taste of pineapple juice. So, sort of like having a foot on either side of that line.
As for the guava, I do think it was present in the profile but certainly not as heavily as the pineapple and not in a way that I think would be clear if you weren’t already familiar with the ingredients. It was certainly more of an undertone, and I think if it did anything at all it was just add a little contrast to the floral aspects and depth to the overall tropical profile. Still pleasant, but not the star and those guava notes, in my opinion, shouldn’t be the reason you get this tea because I think if you’re hoping for those element then you will be disappointed.
Overall? A very nice tea though! I greatly enjoyed the cup and it’s something I’d really happily drink again if it was more available to me from here in Canada.
