16396 Tasting Notes
Midday cuppa.
This is old leaf, in fact I’m kind of scared to put any thought into just how old it actually is because I’m sure it’s a number I wont feel good about at all. However, that said I don’t think you can really tell because the flavour is still so good!
This cup was mostly sweet, candied ginger notes with like a boozey amaretto/almond sort of body note and the brightness of cherry in the first split seconds of the sip and then again in the finish. Really smooth, and consistent overall this is one that is a very reliable cup that touches on a lot of great qualities; fruit, sweetness, dessert elements, spice…
I love it.
Made this one up for lunch; it was the perfect bowl of comfort food to sip on during a lazy Sunday afternoon!
Nothing says comforting more than a giant bowl of miso with ramen so of course when I saw that we were releasing soup teas again this year and one was going to be Miso flavoured I was super on board with it before I’d even tried it. It was even more exciting when I found out it was a matcha miso soup/tea! Matcha makes great soup stock/broth and already had umami/marine qualities so it’s a fabulous pairing.
I started by making a vegetable stock; chopped up onion, carrot, and celery with some minced garlic and three perfect spoon fulls of this mixed into the pot; reduce it down and get a good simmer going so that the whole kitchen smells divine. Only then do I start cooking the ramen, and fuck does it smell and look good! I took my time, cooking it slowly and finally to serve I topped it with freshly ground black pepper and an egg.
Divine.
The taste was super satisfying; very rich, and like the packaging on the miso mix says a true “umami bomb”. Basically just an explosion of flavours in the mouth. In particular, I really liked the addition of onion and garlic with the matcha and miso mix. The egg was good too though because the creamyness of the yolk totally breaks up what might otherwise be a somewhat overly savory dish. Mmm! If you like miso even a little bit, I 100% recommend trying this one out!
Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/BfWkXialDO4/?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.
Enjoyed a rare cup of this as a treat for myself after a long week, and just ‘cause it’s been so long since I last had any of it. VariaTEA was so kind to keep me stocked up that I really do need to take more effort to revisit it given how much I absolutely love it.
I swear, I got like no black tea in the leaf I measured out yesterday though. Just huge, chunky cranberries and pear pieces. It still tasted perfect though; tart and creamy with very supple qualities and a delicate, sweet and almost floral (from the pear) finish. Tastes like home.
I’d sell a kidney to get DT to bring this one back. And I know I sort of say that with a lot of blends but there’s no DT blend I mean it more with that this one. It’s my favourite.
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.
Holy nostalgia bomb!
It’s certainly been a long while since I had a blend from Della Terra so thank you to Starfevre for passing this one along to me and letting me sort of relive that. I know I’ve had this one before in the past, but it’s been so long that I don’t really remember anything about it. I’m going to guess by my rating that I probably found it to be just about average, or slightly below. I wonder if I’ll still feel that way having now been exposed to so many other teas…
Steeped up, I will say that this still smells really nice despite definitely being old. To its credit, though, it was in a vacuum sealed bag that was totally unopened so I bet that helped preserve it a lot. Steeping aroma is actually very toasty, with sort of that aromatic orange ‘oil’ kind of undertone to it.
The flavour is… ok.
It’s surprisingly very toasty/roasty with almost more of a charred nut kind of flavour than any sort of orange or ‘brulee’ aspects. Not that they aren’t there though; the caramelized/burned sugar notes come through in the top notes and a bit in the body and they’re mostly nice but just a little bit bitter – like sugar that’s a second or two past the point of just being caramelized. The orange is more in the finish; it’s a touch pithy/orange peel like but mostly very nice and refreshing – I just think it’s weird with all of the roastyness.
Overall, I would have described the flavour as good. Not incredible, not off putting but adequate. It meets expectations in the simplest of ways. That said, I had an idea about half way through my cup that I decided to act on and it was a bit of a game changer: I added in a very small scoop of vanilla gelato and let that melt into the tea and man was that fucking tasty! It just sort of softened any bitterness/overly roasty aspects and added a creaminess to the whole cup that tied together some of those flavour notes that weren’t meshing as well. It was a simple choice that made a world of difference, and elevated the whole experience!
Iced!
I’m having a hard time going back to drinking this one just plain and iced/cold brewed now that I’ve seen what kind of insane deliciousness it’s capable of in cocktail form! I mean, that cocktail was so good I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t dreamed of it at least once. However, the iced tea is still nice too – totally packs some tartness/punch overall but the cherry finish is really sweet and candy like, and I’m actually getting a fair bit of the florals from the rose too. Definitely channels some of those candied rose vibes I loved so much in Camellia Sinensis’ Des Roses et Des Bonbons blend! But, you know, just a hair more sour.
And clearly it was popular too; I can only speak for the store I work at but we sold out a fair bit before Valentine’s Day, and we’ve had so many sad people come in looking for this one only to break it to them that we’re out. Maybe it’ll come back? Who knows.
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.
Gong Fu! I mean, how can you not Gong Fu a tea when it’s literally in the name!?
This session was actually from a while ago, but I’ve been putting off writing the note for it. I don’t know why – it was nothing but lovely, both in atmosphere and in the flavour of the tea itself. It’s actually a blend of a few teas; black and oolong. However, it all comes together really seamlessly to create a very, very sweet and smooth full bodied profile. I don’t think you could come up with a descriptor any better than ‘honey’ because that’s the flavour that every single infusion radiated. Almost more of a creamed honey, though. Possibly because the tea itself had a strong malt to it, and slight notes of creamy chocolate as well.
Like many black blends, when it comes to Gong Fu this one doesn’t have the world’s longest staying power; I’d say the first five infusions were pretty solid and enjoyable but after infusion six the drop off was very sudden and by infusion eight the tea was so stripped of anything enjoyable. If I was redoing the session I would have stopped after five steeps and just enjoyed it for the short, but meaningful, profile it was able to produce for me.
My sample isn’t big enough for two Gong Fu sessions so I’ll actually have to finish this one off Western style eventually, despite the name, but I’m glad I got in one good session with this because it was a wonderful, vibrant flavour that completely nailed the ‘honey’ aspect!
I wanted to try my hand at infusing tea into a liquor using some cold brewing, and after poling my coworkers for ideas/suggestions the thing I ended up going for was some Coffee Pu’erh infused Irish Cream! I actually made this a while ago but I’m lazy and just getting around to writing about it now…
The ‘infusing’ process was easy enough though; I poured a generous amount of Irish Cream into a mason jar and then dumped in around 20g of Coffee Pu’erh, sealed it up and gave it a good shake before popping it into the fridge to cold brew for like two days. After my infusion time, I just strained the mix through a cheese cloth to get all of the tea out and I was left with a still very, very rich and sweet Irish Cream liquor, just a touch darker brown with a kind of medium bodied coffee/almond aroma.
Now, I want to be clear that this was still super sweet/sugary – and it’s not an overwhelmingly strong coffee flavour overall the same way you get when you just drink the tea straight up; but it’s totally there and it adds a really nice sort of secondary flavour to the alcohol. You could absolutely do a lot of things with it; use it as creamer in coffee or an iced cap or something, pour it over icecream, use it in baking or something maybe? I don’t know – lots of uses. Of course, the other obvious use would be in cocktails or shots. I went for shots.
So, I also own some Kahlua Chili Chocolate liquor, so what I did was layer a shot glass 50/50 with the chocolate chili liquor and my Coffee Pu’erh Irish Cream infusion. I mean, chocolate, coffee, and Irish Cream is a pretty fucking solid flavour pairing as is and there’s no reason you can’t introduce that bit of spice to switch things up. The shot was great; sweet, creamy coffee/cream/chocolate and then that kick of chili heat in the finish that sort of pulls you away from alcohol burn towards, well, spice burn. Which I still think is better overall.
Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/Be_qhMAllqH/?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.
So many people on Instagram told me I needed to try Coconut Bubble tea, and I listened! In general I’d say a like coconut about as much as the average person; it’s never my go to flavour and it’s never something I feel like I have to shy away from either. Ultimately, I think I felt the same way about this bubble tea flavour too – it was certainly good in a lot of ways; the fact it was very rich, not overly sweet, and very, very creamy. It also struck me as sort of a mix between a more natural coconut flavour and coconut candy/simulated coconut, but a well balanced mix.
So far from this specific shop in the Food Court (Umi Sushi) I’ve tried…
Taro, Blueberry, Watermelon, Peach, Strawberry, Kiwi, Honeydew, and Coconut.
I’d say that this one is pretty solidly in the middle of all the flavours I’ve tried. I’d have it again if I was really in the mood for coconut or even just to break up a streak of having the same thing, but otherwise it’s not a go to or something to avoid. Thanks for the recommendations though, guys! I’m thinking next time maybe going for the Sesame, just ‘cause it’s so different?
Flavors: Coconut, Creamy
Tea Press.
Didn’t actually pick up the lavender in this infusion, which was weird to me. Instead it tasted like strawberry hard candies and rose water Turkish Delight with a sweet, and refreshing spearmint finish. It made me wonder if spearmint Turkish Delight is a thing, ’cause I feel like as long as you were using a sweeter mint like Spearmint or Wintergreen that could actually be a really unique and refreshing thing. Especially if you were to go for a hybrid flavour like ’Rosewater and Wintergreen".
Some confectioner needs to make that happen.
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.
With milk, and vanilla agave.
This tasted like some sort of super sugary, fancy coffee shop drink marketed towards teenagers; “Chocolate covered almond Frap with two pumps of Vanilla Syrup and a dark chocolate drizzle topped with whipped cream, cocoa powder, and crushed toasted almonds”. Some sort of nonsense on the ‘secret menu’ that has a dumb name like The Chimera Frap. But I mean all of that said, I was craving sugary sweet chocolate nonsense when I made it and that’s what I got so…
I was a happy tea drinker.
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.
