16396 Tasting Notes
Had this one a little while ago…
Honestly was sort of putting trying this one off, but I can’t even really tell you why. Nothing in the blend actually sounded bad to me apart from the green tea base but nothing really jumped out about it either? It’s actually mostly just tastes like orange though. I mean, it’s a pretty smooth light to medium bodied orange flavour with some vanilla undertones that make it a little softer and creamier but there isn’t some weird, crazy underlying flavour element to this like there often is with AU blends. I guess I thought maybe the jatoba wood would do something crazy/weird to the flavour but I’m not even really sure that I tasted it at all?
So yeah, hints of a sort of grassier and slightly nutty green tea base and then a whole lot of aromatic, smooth orange that had a little bit of an “essential oils”/perfume kind of thing going on with it? And then a really soft vanilla undertone/finish. It was pretty unassuming to me overall; just kind of there? The orange did feel really appropriate for winter/the holidays in a lot of ways and I’m having a hard time figuring out in words why this blend/the orange in it seems so wildly appropriate for Christmas over other orange blends I’ve had. It’s just that, the impression I had at the end of it all was almost that I’d kind of feel guilty drinking this one not in the winter time? I just don’t know why I feel like that, though!
Shouldn’t orange be a year round flavour? I mean, for me at least, it generally is. I don’t know; I feel like the profile here was pretty average and yet I’m left feeling all kinds of confused…
Sipdown (444)!
Finished this one off on the way home from work today. I got off after buses stopped running for the day, so I actually carpooled with a coworker. It was a touch awkward ’cause like a few blocks from my house we got pulled over and she got ticketed for driving without her lights on at night. I have a feeling she felt super embarrassed; it was such a silly thing and neither of us caught it…
The most awkward part was having to sit in the car with her for nearly twenty minutes, literally three blocks from my house, while the cop took down her license and registration and the filled out all the stupid stuff for the ticket. Like, I definitely could have just gotten out and walked home, but I have a feeling that probably would have looked shady as fuck, no? At least I had tea to sip on in the meantime.
Honestly, this was a very painless sipdown in regard to everything but the situation in which I was drinking it. It’s a nice enough tea flavour though that it was a really pleasant and satisfying cup, but not so nice that I feel upset about having now finished it off and not having any more of it around. That’s the best way to do a sipdown! No bad feelings either way!
Flavour wise, it’s very much a Monk’s Blend sort of taste but without the same degree of sweetness that I’d associate with Monk’s Blend. More of a soft, natural pomegranate than syrupy pomegranate, really. Not much to get really excited about, but nothing unpleasant! I highly doubt I’d seek this out again in any shape/form but I’d definitely happily drink it if offered.
Sipdown (445)!
So, I finished this one off as a latte today at work, but it wasn’t a sipdown in the truest sense. Honestly, I actually liked this one a fair bit but I knew it was something that was gonna take me a really long time to eventually finish off on my own because of how rarely I actually crave ginger so I brought the pouch in with me to work and made myself one last latte and then let my coworkers all try it/finish off the rest.
Our store only received one shipment of this, and we sold out so quickly that most of the staff didn’t even have a chance to buy a bag of this if they wanted to try it, so it felt good to share with the people I work with who were disappointed they couldn’t try it out. I felt a little bit like the Santa of tea/matcha! Gingerbread Matcha Lattes for the well behaved and patient tea guides! ;)
This latte was very smooth though, and while I still think this is immensely ginger heavy (great if you love ginger; meh if you don’t) I thought that it brewed up a lot smoother with the milk, and had a little more of that molasses sweetness I felt like I missed with my first go round. Knowing that this was gonna be my last tasting, since I gave away the rest, I felt super satisfied with the outcome of the brew. Just, really appropriate for the holiday and one I’m really glad I tried – but without the help finishing it off I would have had this kicking around well after Christmas, and it’s just not something I need year round.
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.
Still have a shit ton of this, so I pulled it out tonight and made a mug for myself and one for my mother while we did various Christmas things, like set up our Pine tree and decorate Christmas cookies…
We definitely half-assed the Christmas stuff for the most part though; the tree wont have ornaments on it, and we didn’t decorate anything else save for a giant bowl of walnut on the coffee table. Plus, of course, cookies are only a temporary Christmas thing – they’ll definitely be consumed sooner rather than later. It’s SOMETHING though, right?
This felt thematic to Christmas/semi Christmas decorating though – and my mom even spiked her cup of it with some actual Brandy. Personally I just stuck with a little bit of cinnamon flavoured honey though since I remembered this one tasting a little flat last time I tried it. I figured a flavoured honey would at least add something to the blend. If I’m being honest, it was still pretty light/mild though. Not bad, though! I didn’t get much boozy from it – just like a soft, kind of creamy apple flavour a top a sort of malty/bready black base tea, with cinnamon finishing notes from the honey. It reminded me a lot more of like a baked apple/generic cinnamon apple flavour than anything else.
Still, not bad – and totally appropriate for the evening! I feel like this should taste so much better than it actually does, though…
Drank this about an hour ago as an early evening sort of thing while the fam jam and I decorated ugly Christmas sweater shaped cookies! We got out Christmas tree tonight, so the whole house smells delightfully of pine, and it’s great. No ornaments though; and honestly there probably wont be – even having a tree in the first place is festive enough for us!
Also somewhat ironically, my Black Friday W2T order arrived just moments after I selected this tea to enjoy tonight so now I have even more W2T goodies to explore on Monday/Tuesday, which will be MY weekend. #RetailLife
I don’t know if it’s because of the new presence of a pine tree in the house or not, but I’m getting a really nice pine/cedar wood note from this tonight as I sip on it. Just glancing at Steepster reviews, though, I see I’m not the only person to have observed pine wood so that does make me feel a little better about it not being a totally persuasion of environment kind of thing. It’s very similar to the way I taste pine when I drink Whispering Pine’s Yabao tea, actually. In addition to the pine wood notes, there’s some soft veggie sort of like the sweet, pulpy part of a cucumber and then some other more typical white tea like notes such as hay/straw, cream, and LIGHT malt. It’s a good mix of sweet and woody/natural and I’m really digging it.
So the DT that I work at is RIGHT NEXT to a Saje, and our staff is actually quite good friends with the bulk of the employees there – we just shop at one another’s store quite often and the other keyholder at DT besides myself is married to one of the keyholders at Saje.
I mention this because the only reason I even went into the Saje in the first place during my lunch break was to say hi to some of the familiar faces working in the evening. I ended up walking out having bought a new oil for my diffuser though, and more tea. Damn it, self! We’re trying not to spend money on tea right now! I mean, I got a mall discount though – so it was cheaper tea? Yeah – that’s what I’m gonna tell myself to feel better about the impulse shopping.
Anyway – I brewed this up in the morning to try it out and I’m sipping on it slowly now out of a ‘tea for one’ pot. It’s actually sort of surprisingly good, considering the only ingredients are yerba mate, green tea, lemon balm, and eleuthero root. Flavour wise, it’s definitely got a very grassy/woody taste pretty indicative of the green tea in the blend; however there are lemon undertones from the lemon balm that add a nice soft/gentle fruitiness/citrus quality and the eleuthero does a great job sweetening the whole thing up to a point where the green tea is actually super tolerable. Eleuthero is sort of related to ginseng (often called Chinese Ginseng) and I’m definitely getting that sort of ginseng like sweetness from this infusion so I’m feeling that connection/relationship for sure.
Yeah – overall it’s like a mix of sweet grass/birch wood with very soft lemony undertones that’s fairly sweet just overall as well. Really natural tasting, and quite smooth! I don’t know that it’s the sort of flavour that I’d reach for often, but as a supposedly “high energy” blend I think it’s definitely doable for an early morning kind of thing when I might be feeling something more natural/somewhat light bodied in flavour instead of a sweeter/more overtly flavoured blend.
Sipped on an iced cup of this one most of my shift yesterday, with some added in milk for extra creaminess. It certainly wasn’t bad, but the intense sweetness of the “honey” flavour in the blend did sort of start to get to me after a while; it was just very rich and a third of the way through the tumbler of it I was drinking I started finding it to be quite cloying. In the future I think I’d probably have to under leaf it if I made it the same way again so that it’d be a softer/milder sweetness that wouldn’t get as intense so quickly.
Sipdown (420)!
Finished this one off late last night after I’d gotten home from work! It was surprisingly sweet, with a strong presence of coconut, apple and carrot! Honestly the carrot was the big shocker out of that range of flavours – lately this has almost been more of a spice cake flavour without any carrot, so glad I got some in this last cup. As for the spices, there was a whole lot of cinnamon and honestly not a lot else this time around – I’m not complaining though, the cinnamon tasted nice mixed with everything else.
To be honest, I likely wouldn’t buy this one again – but I don’t regret buying either. It was really nice to have around this autumn/winter in general, as well. Pretty solid, and mostly consistent in terms of flavour.
Iced Tea Sipdown (421)!
Finished this one off today at work – unlike the other Adagio blend I got at C4 I decided to not drag my heels with this one so I just finished it all off in one go as a large iced tea. It was actually very good, although I think to call this a “green tea” blend is really pushing it because it’s almost all fruit/tisane with ZERO green tea taste.
I couldn’t taste the ginger in it either, for that matter. No, it was mostly a very, very pleasant cherry heavy flavour with apple and orange undertones. It reminded me a lot of a cherry snow cone, with just a hint of tartness. I think it was the perfect blend for Cheryl Blossom too – very “cherry bombshell” with the sweet and tart kind of mirroring her swaying personality type, and the orange peel and bright red liquor of the tea actually mirroring her visual characteristics quite well too.
I think I’d actually order this one again – probably in the summer for iced tea, though.
Sipping on this one now, as I nibble on brunch and slowly get ready for work.
I got this one as my free ounce of “hand picked for me based on my order” tea from my Small Business Saturday order; it’s a good enough pick. I mean, I ordered three things and they were all pretty all over the place so I’m guessing it wasn’t easy to totally narrow down the “perfect” recommendation for me. It’s something I might have ordered for myself at some point, but not a “I must try it” sort of tea either.
I’m doing it Western right now ‘cause I need to be leaving for work quite soon; less than half an hour to go and I should still probably cram in a shower for good measure. I don’t think I smell, but it IS a small workplace so it’d be the thoughtful thing to do.
I’m not overly impressed by this one to be completely honest. I mean, it’s very very smooth and super removed from being anything even close to fishy so in that regard it’s lovely. However, none of the flavour notes are really exciting, bold or vibrant – in fact, it’s a little ‘flat’/dull all around. Main notes are soft earth, nuts, cereal/oat, maybe some mushroom like stuff? Mushroom is a hard one for me; I’m allergic (though MUCH LESS so that I used to be) so I haven’t had a lot of exposure to it – it’s challenging for me to identify within tea and I rely a lot on what others tell me it tastes like/comparison of similar flavours between blends generally described as mushroom like. Then the whole cup has this quality as if it’s been very finely dusted with cocoa powder.
It’s really NOT bad – I’m just not feeling it.
