16396 Tasting Notes
Another tea that I’m revisiting to see if my thoughts have changed from the first time I experienced it…
This is one that I haven’t tried since it first came out; I really didn’t like it then and every time I open up the tin of it for a customer I’m reminded of why. It smells off to me; something about it conjures up strong images of dusty attics, and sad, wilted looking raspberries.
So, like the other two I revisited, I made this one up as an iced tea – which I believe is also how I tried it the first time. However, drinking it straight my opinion of it hasn’t changed at all. It still tastes weirdly stale to me, and the dusty, dank flavour of the white tea and chamomile contrasted against the sort of sour taste of the raspberry/mango/pineapple is pretty off putting.
I did try adding some vanilla agave syrup since that’s been a pretty reliable “make it better” solution for some of the other teas I’ve tried this week and I will say that it improved the raspberry notes in the tea quite a bit: they were sweeter and juicier. Sure, more candy like, but still it was an improvement. However, even the vanilla agave syrup can’t save whatever it is in this blend that reminds me of dust.
Oh well; you can’t love them all and of the three teas I revisited last week I think a 2/3 success rate (with success just defined as ‘drinkable’) is still a pretty good average!
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.
Yet another late night cuppa chocolate mint tea!
I wasn’t kidding when I said that this is quickly becoming my favourite combination of flavours for the evenings! This one is nice because, unlike DT’s Snow Day, it’s a much softer flavour so it has those sweet and cooling elements but it’s more gentle. Because of that gentle quality, I think I works better for the quieter/calmer evenings when you want something peaceful. You know, delicate tea kind of evenings verses robust tea evenings. Does that makes sense?
Next up in my week of retrying teas I wasn’t enamored with the first time I experienced them…
This is a good pick because it’s just returned at the September TOTM; something a lot of my coworkers are thrilled about that I personally was feeling super “meh” about. Last year, when this was one of the fall teas, I just wasn’t feeling it – my biggest complaint was that it didn’t remind me of a muffin. It should have been lighter and softer in flavour with more of a buttery quality, and ideally able to be made in a latte. I believe one of the things I said was that a more apt name would have been “Blueberry Cider”.
So, I steeped it up as an iced tea and was ready to experience what I thought was a pretty below average profile. However, similarly to my recent Live Wire Lemon experience I do think I actually enjoy this one a little more than I remember liking it last year. Now, to be fair I did know going into this tasting that it wasn’t going to taste muffin like, so my expectations were different this time around.
I don’t know – it’s a sweet blueberry and apple flavour combo, with a bit of a mellowness to it. I almost feel like they must have just slightly tweaked the formula for this one though, because it has SOME tartness to it but definitely not the degree I so vividly recall from last year. It’s more… juicy. I also think there’s more yogurt pieces in the tea leaf this year too; so, while it’s not buttery at all it is A LITTLE BIT more creamy. Just slightly.
At the recommendation of a coworker, I added in some vanilla agave to this one half way through my cup just to see how that would change everything – and it was a HUGE change, in a good way. Our staff has just been on such a vanilla agave kick as of late; it’s like our “make it better” fix/solution. Oh, your tea is a little bitter? Too tart? Kind of bland? Add some vanilla agave!
Seriously though, it definitely tempers some of the tartness that stops this from tasting muffin-like for me, creates a more well rounded flavour overall, and in combination with the yogurt pieces actually makes this creamy and buttery enough to resemble what I picture in my head as a ‘muffin’ flavour. I would 100% drink this one again on shift with the vanilla agave added. I doubt I’d buy it, because I don’t really want to buy teas that need agave added to them to be worth drinking at home – but I think this will totally be added to my line up of things I drink/indulge in only at work.
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.
So, I haven’t had this tea since it was brought back as a TOTM at the start of the year…
The reason for that is that I really, really hated it the first time I tried it as a non-employee, and I just wasn’t excited to see it back or re-experience it at all. However, I set a personal goal last week to revisit at least one tea on each of my shifts that I wasn’t a huge fan of initially and see if my opinion had at all changed.
So, I tried this one iced this time around, with some of the vanilla agave syrup we carry.
Admittedly, I do think I enjoy it more than when I first tried it – the proof of that is the fact that I actually finished the entire cup that I had made. In the past, that wouldn’t have been a thing I’d have done with this tea. That said, just because I liked it better than I did last time doesn’t mean that I just flat out ‘liked it’. I’m pretty sure this is one of those teas that I’ll likely just never really love and I think that’s because of the Yaupon base. It just doesn’t do it for me – I find it very weird and off putting.
Which is a shame, because the lemon and apple combo is actually pretty decent. I do find the lemon gets a little pithy/bitter but the addition of the vanilla agave in this was pretty redeeming: it softened some of those rougher edges and gave the profile a creaminess not super unlike the creamy lemon notes in Lemon Pound Cake. If it was JUST that flavour I was experiencing then this would be golden…
Not the case, though.
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.
Hot cuppa, in the evening.
I’m really enjoying mint chocolate teas in the evenings as of late; I get something sweet in flavour which is good for the evenings when I just feel like snacking on things, and the peppermint is really cooling and refreshing, and it helps me wind down for the evening and relax. This one in particular is really good for both of those things because it’s so intense. Definitely a bold, rich flavour! Totally doesn’t work for those times when you’re craving subtlety or a delicate profile – but if you want ‘slap you in the face’ rich then this is the tisane for me.
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, with some honey.
I don’t know; every time I drink this one I feel more and more disappointed with the overall flavour. I want more distinct ginseng from it! Instead, I’m getting a mix of floral notes, grassyness, wood/bark notes, and really mellow/flat tasted light bodied ginseng flavour. And, in this particular cup, some faint astringency in the top of the sip. It’s not that it tastes bad at all – but it’s not what I’m craving or what I hoped it would be.
And, I don’t think it would be a stretch to say that it doesn’t really taste… fresh?
Like, I can easily picture this being the sort of tea that was stored in direct sunlight in one of those damn, oversized mason jar type things that so many tea stores use to ‘display’ their teas that’s actually GARBAGE for them because it exposes them to sunlight. I don’t know if that’s at all a true statement; but it’s just the impression I get based on the flavour…
Oh well; I’m almost finished with this one…
Iced tea.
I think I probably should have added just a pinch of some kind of sweetener to this one to draw out more of fruit flavours of this tea, however I did end up finishing off the cup straight. It was way more base than ‘punch’ though; quite full bodied and strong, and even the tiniest bit astringent too. I got a little bit of very generic fruit flavour but it was STRONGLY covered by the malt and floral notes of the base.
I definitely would have loved a bit more fruit flavour out of this one because that’s what I was craving in the first place – but as an iced black tea, it wasn’t bad tasting. Save for the astringent edge, it was actually a very solid black tea profile. Only downside is that I wanted fruit punch!
This is a queued tasting note.
So, had this one at work the other day as an iced tea. It’s one that I actually really want to get a bit of for at home, but with how many other teas I have already (from DT and otherwise) I’m not allowing myself to purchase any until I finish off some of what I already have. So, just enjoying it at work in the meantime to satisfy those cravings…
It’s a REALLY good iced tea; the lime is so vibrant and juicy and it’s complimented by notes of smooth, sweet green apples. Just a little bit of tartness/tang and acidity to counter what would probably be a near cloying level of sweetness otherwise. It tastes eerily like green skittles, as well – in a very good way. I know there’s also A LOT of mango in the blend too, but honestly? I pretty well never taste the mango: it’s just bold lime notes…
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 (331)!
Just finished this one off as a midday cuppa. It’s not really anything fancy or extravagant; just your run of the mill green tea with sweet spearmint notes. Just the tiniest step up from the even more common/run of the mill green tea and peppermint pairing. I will say, for whatever reason, this read as especially sweet to me when I drank it – not that spearmint isn’t already pretty sweet.
Like usual I’m maintaining my position that, while this was a good tea, if you ARE going to shell out the money for some Dammann Freres it’s much more worthwhile to go for something more unique to the company. You can find a recreation of this at more than a dozen places…
One of my custom teas!!!
This one is supposed to be like a sweet, fruity Hawaiian Punch sort of flavour. It’s got a white tea base because I wanted something soft and smooth that would really lend itself to letting all of the fruit flavours stand out. I added a bit of strawberry leaf and hibiscus, and then passion fruit, pineapple, and strawberry flavouring extracts!
I’m trying it for the first time as a cold brew because this is something that I envision working best as a cold style of tea, be that cold brewer or iced.
- Strong pineapple notes!!! Yummy!
- Pineapple is definitely the same pineapple as my From Pele’s Kitchen blend
- Which of course makes sense; it’s the same flavouring extract/oil
- It’s a very sugary pineapple though, with less acidity/tang to it
- The strawberry is also quite strong; very, very ripe/sweet!
- Has a bit of a “fruit punch candy” vibe going overall
- The passionfruit is light/mild – more just adds to overall tropical flavour/feel
- I actually don’t really taste the hibiscus, however my brew is slightly pink in colour
- So I know that it IS in there…
- I’m pretty satisfied with this one though
- It’s a REALLY niced iced/cold brewed sort of profile
- Once you let go of the idea of it being realistic fruit notes instead of candy like
- It’s a shame I waited until practically the end of summer to create it…
