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Sipdown (231)!

Well, made this one iced at work and then I topped off the cup with some of the left over Sparkling water from when we were using it for sampling earlier in the week to make a sort of “matcha soda”. It didn’t taste terrible, but wasn’t great either. Also, the matcha kept settling very quickly; maybe because of the carbonation? I’m not totally sure what the cause was.

It was a strong drink overall because I was heavy handed with the matcha seeing as I was trying to finish off the package. Anyway, this one continued to be very, very floral which I think was bound to be the case regardless of how strong I made the drink. Obviously, there was a lot of grassyness too. The interesting thing with this brew was that the grape took on a bit of a ‘new’ quality. I’ve definitely described it as candy-like in the past, but with this cup it reminded me of straight up pixie sticks. You know the ones; basically flavoured sugar in a little paper or plastic tube. What’s even the point of those pieces of garbage!? Even as a kid I didn’t love them; there’s WAY BETTER candy out there, and if you get one of the ends wet that’s end game – your pixie stick is basically ruined.

So, tldr…

Finished this one off; didn’t love it and likely wont miss it horribly.

Pixie Sticks are trash.

Yup, the more I drink this one the more natural it feels to me/the less discord there seems to be between the sweet/tart fruity “jam” notes and the “peanut butter”. I wonder if that’s because I’ve kind of figured out the right leaf amount/steep time for this to brew up better, or if it’s because I’m just becoming more accustomed to the weird flavour combination from repeat exposure to it.

Also, the “peanut butter”/sunflower seeds and almond pieces are tasting increasingly creamier to me in these more recent cups. I love that quality, but it’s such a tease because I can’t exaggerate it with milk because of all the damn hibiscus. Fuck hibiscus and curdling…

So, this is a thing we were sampling in stores a few weeks ago; I was waiting to review it until I could post the pictures we took since it was really pretty but my phone is having some issues right now so pictures might not come for a long time…

Anyway; basically we were sampling out tea infused “mocktails”! We started off with an extra strong iced tea and then mixed two parts of that with one part sparkling water, which gave the tea that fun effervescence without compromising the flavour. From there, we rimmed the glasses with the coconut cocktail sugar we’re selling at the moment using a mix of 50/50 Sparkling Sangria tea and coconut agave to get the sugar to stick. Finally, we garnished the glasses with a lemon wedge gummy candy, which we were also selling. My store is out of the gummy candies now, but others still may have them.

Anyway, it was fucking delicious.

Sparkling Sangria is already a very tropical tasting herbal because of all the fruits; it’s got mango, pineapple, and passionfruit! Personally, I think the mango is the strongest fruit flavour but they’re definitely all still present to at least a small degree. The coconut sugar rim just makes it feel all the more tropical though! It’s very sweet and fun, too! That sweetness is a bit unavoidable if you’re using the cocktail sugar, but you can cut it down by not rimming with agave and leaving out the gummy candy if you’re trying to hold back on sugar intake – though things are super fun, and the agave makes rimming easier but neither are completely necessary.

Also, pro tip, if you want to kind of do this up as a “real cocktail” there are several cool ways you could go about doing that! My top pick would be adding in some white rum because it’d compliment both the fruit (especially mango/pineapple) but the coconut sugar as well. However, vodka would be good just for strength, and you could definitely substitute the sparkling water for either white wine or champagne to make this more Sangria like. All would be really fun things to try out.

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.

Morning cold brew.

This one’s not bad; pretty smooth with a solid overall sweetness from the grenadine. It’s also quite malty, as well. I’ve found in the past that cold brewed or even iced Monk’s Blend doesn’t always work super well because the black base tends to get too strong and will over power the grenadine, but this one came out pretty balanced!

That said, once I finish off the Monk’s Blend I have on hand I don’t know that I’ll buy it again; I used to be pretty into Monk’s Blend and I even for a while tried to learn how to make my own Monk’s Blend with different kinds of black tea bases, but I think my palate has just evolved to a point where I don’t find them as enjoyable overall as I used to.

Last tea from the Oasis collection to try!

Like all the others, tried this one iced. I’m gonna keep the review for this one shorted because I think the flavour of it was pretty straight to the point.

I think as a staff we all wanted to like this one because it’s unique; rooibos base with aloe vera and prickly pear! I mean, that’s pretty unconventional, and seemed like it had lots of potential too! So we were rooting for this one. Sadly, all it tasted like was stevia (so much stevia) and a whole lot of hibiscus. It was my least favourite of the whole collection; and one I doubt I’ll revisit. Also, it was SO red that it stained the straw…

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.

Next iced tea in the collection.

First time I saw this one, I was not into it. It really looks like a raspberry version of Strawberry Rhubarb Parfait – there are A LOT of overlapping ingredients, and I don’t like SRP so I figured I wouldn’t like this one. Also, it’s got straight up sugar in it too, which isn’t a pro in my books. However, the closer we got to launch day the more the idea of it was growing on me, and when we finally cracked open the first kilo bag I found myself really into the aroma of the dry leaf: it was juicy raspberry, with this familiarity I couldn’t totally shake.

Steeped, I think this actually (and reluctantly) ends up being my favourite of the new teas after Passion Punch. Mostly, I like it because it reads as a very solid/pure raspberry flavour with a faint sliver of tartness and a lot of mellow/natural sweetness. Now, mentally I know that it ISN’T natural sweetness because there IS sugar in the blend, but it doesn’t taste super cloying/sweet and artificial to me despite that. The raspberry also tastes pretty familiar: in a way, it’s like the raspberry from Rainbow Sherbet but at the same time, it has the sort of mellowness and slight creaminess of Blackberry Blizzard. Then, while having similarities to both of those summer blends, there’s still a quality about it which is really familiar but I don’t think tea related at all. I still can’t place that aspect of it, which annoys me a little bit.

Unlike Passion Punch, which I loved, I likely wont buy any of this one for myself but I anticipate it being a “go to” to drink on shift when I want an iced tea.

But to sum up:
- Good raspberry flavour
- Tasted fresh and naturally sweet, despite not actually being “natural” sweetness
- Has a hint of creaminess to it (from the cream flavour/yogurt in the blend)
- Oddly familiar

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.

On to Peachy Lychee!

So, this is the one that both Kandyce and I were the most excited about! For different reasons, though – for me I was mostly pumped about having a lychee offering in our collection, I’ve been asking for one even before I got hired! I’m also even more excited because it’s a black lychee tea. Kandyce was excited because it’s the only two in this collection that’s able to be made into a latte, and I suppose we were both stoked because there there’s no added sweeteners/stevia in this one.

The dry leaf for this one smells really amazing; distinctly of lychee, but also of the same juicy/bright peach aroma that Just Peachy has – which tastes amazing as well. We were SO excited for this one!

However, brewed up as an iced tea this was a little unimpressive. Both the peach and lychee flavours were present in the brewed cup, but they lacked any sense of brightness/juiciness and they felt rather flat/forced. As well, the overall blend came out very weird tasting: not quite bitter, but definitely in that sort of flavour range/close to bitter. We couldn’t exactly place what was off about it until our managed Dani tasted it and loved it – it was at that point that we realized this one has white hibiscus in it; and then it sort of clicked for us! The white hibiscus is largely what makes Buddha’s Blend taste so bitter, and neither Kandyce nor myself like that blend AT ALL because we dislike the white hibiscus so much. On the other hand, Dani adores Buddha’s Blend/doesn’t taste anything weird with the white hibiscus. So, I definitely think that’s what was weird about this tea for us.

However, all in all I don’t think this one it worth giving up on! I’m still committed to finding a way to brew this one up that tastes good because I will enjoy the lychee tea, damnit! So, that means I’ll be trying it hot, as a latte, and definitely playing around with steep times to try and get a better brew. It just smells so good, damnit! I know I can get it to taste the same way!

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.

Next up in the Oasis collection.

I wasn’t super excited about this one, honestly – it never sounded bad to me, but at this point do we need another melon tea? We’ve now got Cantaloupe Ice, Sour Watermelon, Melon Drop, and now this one too. That’s a lot of melon options.

Anyway; brewed up this wasn’t bad. I think out of the five new ones, it comes in perfectly in the middle for me – it’s not amazing but there wasn’t anything negative about it either. I will say, it’s actually a pretty mild/mellow melon flavour overall. In fact, both Kandyce and I agreed that it tasted much more like the fig in the blend (of which there is a lot) than the melon. So, fig/melon, with pineapple undertones. Sadly, this blend also has stevia in it but, for the record, I didn’t actually taste it personally. So as much as I want to hate on the stevia I also can’t because it didn’t seem to affect the flavour for me.

Other worthwhile points: this is a VERY heavy/chunky tea, also it’s VERY hydrating.

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.

Welp; it’s launch day for another tea collection – The Oasis Collection!

This time around, the collection features five new teas with more of a tropical inspiration! My coworker Kandyce and I tried all of them together; so without further ado let the reviews begin! We did all of them as iced teas because that’s generally what our summer teas are geared towards; we also got to test out our new iced tea cup size – 24 oz! It’s fairly large, but that also made it the perfect size for sharing with someone else, making it easy to sample all of the new teas pretty quickly.

Going into the tea tasting, this one was one I was pretty neutral about; I liked that it was a white tea, because I don’t think we ever have nearly enough of them. I was skeptical about a hibiscus heavy white for reason I think would be obvious. As for the passion fruit flavour; I felt like it would go one of two ways – either it would be like Green Passionfruit, which I dislike, or ideally it would taste like Pink Passionfruit (an older limited edition summer blend from a few years ago) and I’d love it! Well…

Turns out this tastes exactly like I remember Pink Passionfruit tasting! So, fans of Pink Passionfruit take note – because this is a REALLY good “dupe” for that blend. It’s got the sweetness, brightness, and juicyness of flavour with hints of tangyness both from the fruit itself which is pretty acidic/sour and from the hibiscus. I wont lie, you can definitely taste the hibiscus but this is a case where it compliments the flavour of the fruit quite well and actually adds to the blend.

Honestly, I’m totally enamored with this one! It was also the only blend that our staff, when we did the tasting, all completely liked/agreed was great. I will definitely be buying some for myself today when I get in to 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.

Drank this one iced today on shift.

We were training a new hire today, and he was practicing making drinks in drink station so we all got a different kind of drink: hot, iced, matcha, latte. I’m pretty sure I haven’t had this one since getting hired (although I’ve definitely tried it prior), so I thought it’d be worth revisiting. Especially since I was really craving strawberry.

Our new Tea Guide is fasting right now for Ramadan so he couldn’t drink any tea or anything on shift; and I have to say that while I always have so much respect for people who partake in Ramadan I had an ever greater level of respect today because can you even imagine being surrounded by food/drink all day and not being able to have any of it? That level of dedication and faith is certainly commendable, even if I’m not religious myself.

Anyway – this tea was pretty good. I wouldn’t say it was quite as good as I remembered because it WAS a lot more tart than I recalled it tasting. However, the strawberry is just really pleasant and refreshing as an iced tea. It compliments the coconut really well too, and just creates an overall drink with tropical elements that still feels like your average fruit tea. I think personally it’d work better for me with a shorter steep time because then it’d taste a lot less tart but it was a great summery option for me today.

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.