16396 Tasting Notes
So…
Adding peppermint agave to this tea seems like a really good plan. However, I’m hear to tell you that it most definitely is not. Or at least wasn’t in my case. Like, this is already a very sweet tea so the sweetness of agave just pushes it so far past the line of being enjoyable. I wanted lots and lots of minty goodness, and I got that – but I also got this wave a sweetness that I bet would be too much for even a sugar crazed, screaming five year old. Skip the agave, and just enjoy this tea for the delicious brew it produces on its own is my recommendation…
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.
At work, with milk.
I’ve been training our new Keyholder at work this week and part of that is doing tea tastings to introduce her to the most popular blends in each category of tea. Of course, when it comes to black teas this is almost always a crowd pleaser. It’s actually been a long time since I’ve had it myself, so I made a cup for me as well.
Flavour wise, it was exactly as I remembered it being! Super creamy and decadent with those familiar and comforting bergamot and vanilla notes! Simple, rich, and pretty nice all around. What actually threw me off was the thickness of the liquor – like it was so heavy and creamy that I actually went and double checked the date on the milk because I figured there was no way that could be normal but it was, so I really don’t know what was up with that. It really had me scratching my head, 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.
Loved the concept of this one, and the dry leaf’s aroma was equally enticing! It smelled like robust, sweet oranges and marzipan! I was sure I’d enjoy it. Steeped up there was something quite off about it though and I’m almost positive it’s whatever AQTT is using as the ‘orange’ flavouring because it had the same very harsh, chalky, bitter and artificial orange taste that made Blood Orange Punch so unpleasant/undrinkable. At least this one, for me anyway, wasn’t that bad and I was still about the finish the cup even if I wouldn’t describe it as a ‘good’ flavour – I think the use of black tea base and general sweetness of the almond went a long way to making that happen though. Those parts of the blend were lovely.
I’m like 90% sure that it comes down to that orange flavour though. I can’t speak for others, but I think I’m just personally really not a fan of it.
I’m sad to hear this but not surprised :(
My vendor for a handful of flavors recently reformulated some of their citrus flavors. I think this one has been changed the most. Or at least has been the most divisive in my office too. I’m currently trying to find a new source. I’ll probably be holding off on orange teas until then.
Ok, so last time on my ‘quest’ to try every bubble tea flavour I went for Strawberry and it was only alright. I was gonna do Coconut next, but a coworker convinced me to skip straight to honeydew so that’s where we’re at now…
It was ok. I mean it definitely isn’t a natural honeydew flavour but instead that very sweet, creamy and candy like flavour that artificial honeydew things have. I actually usually like that flavour a lot – honeydew is probably my favourite of all the melonds, naturally or artificially speaking. That said, this was SO FUCKING SWEET. Like, ‘Oh my God’ levels of sweet. I don’t think I could do this one again unless I was really craving something sweet. In fact, as much as I enjoyed the flavour I actually had to enlist the help of some coworkers to finish it because I was getting like sugar shock or something…
Easily the sweetest bubble tea I’ve had to date.
Flavors: Honeydew
Sipping away at a Western style mug of this one currently. It’s going to be my last tea of the night; I just wanted something to drink while working on some reviews and Shou actually makes me sort of sleepy so it works as a before bed tea too.
I’m struck by how clean and smooth this one is, with a really thick and almost syrupy seeming mouthfeel. The balance between sweet and umami notes is also really nice; I can see it being even better if you were Gong Fu-ing as well! Main note I pick up on is wood, like cedar/pine. However, other notes are a sort of ‘semi salted’ Earth note, sweet smoke, and raisins/prune. More of those raisin notes in the top of the sip than anywhere else, with the more umami aspects coming out in the finish.
It almost seems like this would be a waste of the tea itself, but I can imagine this making a bomb as fuck soup stock or broth. Toss in like a handful of onions/shallots, some celery, carrot, pinch of brown sugar, and firm cubed tofu and you’d have an awesome dish. If I end up liking the rest of my sample Gong Fu enough to cake this, then I’ll try that out – but if I’m just gonna be working with this sample amount then I’ll leave this as an idea untested…
I can’t use the little flavor packets that come with ramen because they contain MSG which is one of my migraine triggers, so I actually use tea as the broth in my ramen and it works very well! I’ll have to put this one on my list. At the moment I’ve been using very lemon-gingery/fennel teas.
I like Genmaicha, Houjicha, and Matcha a lot used as broth; fennel sounds like it’d be right up my alley though so I’ll add that one to my list! ;)
New Collection!
As a whole, this collection kind of makes me feel conflicted. I mean, I like matcha a lot but I also don’t like green tea and most of the teas in this collection are green teas. I wanted to like this one though; it sounds like an awesome concept.
The dry leaf smells pretty good too; definitely sweet and nutty from the almond with the same sort of creamy aroma that Let It Snow had, probably from the white chocolate curls that they both have in common. Steeped up? It’s not for me. I mean, my issue actually isn’t with the green tea itself – it just tastes like a stevia bomb has gone off in my mouth. Usually I don’t even register the taste of stevia in most teas, but this is really intense to me so I can’t even imagine how someone who’s much more sensitive to stevia would react to it.
I’ll likely try it a few more times just to be sure – but I’m probably just gonna have to pass on this one overall. Can’t love ’em all.
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.
I was a bit disappointing with the new collection because I’m also not a big matcha fan or green tea fan. Zestfully green of course is tasty, but the new ones are less appealing. Milk and stevia? no thanks. I wish they would stop putting stevia, whey, and lactose powder in teas.
I’m of different minds on this; personally I certainly wish there was less stevia/hibiscus/licorice roots in blends because it’s something I don’t like. However, you’d be surprised by the amount of people who actually come into the store specifically looking for those ingredients. There’s DEFINITELY a demand for that. So, I don’t think total elimination of those ingredients is the solution – but maybe just working on finding a better balance?
Stevia definitely should not go anywhere near green tea.
Ms. Strange, people actually come in looking for stevia in teas? I admit, I’d be one looking for hibiscus. I drink it straight up often, but honestly, in blends, it really varies for me. Most of the red herbal blends kind of taste the same.
They really do. It took a lot of getting used to, on my part, for sure. Of those three divisive ingredients, licorice root is probably the one that people come in looking for the most though.
Cold Brew!
I wonder if this will come back this summer…
I’m the majority of the way through my reserve of it now; for a long while I was hoarding it just in case it didn’t come back but I’ve reached a point where I’m kinda like “meh, I’ll just finish it and if it comes back great and if not ok”. Like, just a hair above being totally apathetic towards it in general. I mean, it’s still a great flavour – I loved this cold brew because it was super sweet and juicy and really well balanced between the pineapple, mango, and coconut. I just don’t view it anymore as this jaw dropping thing that I can’t find a replacement for from other companies if I were to really give finding a replacement a good try…
(I still kinda hope it comes back 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.
Evening cuppa, while playing games with the famjam.
I added some vanilla agave to this one – I don’t know why but I feel like every time I’ve made this one since first getting it it’s tasted less and less like vanilla, which is sad ‘cause the vanilla is 100% why I wanted it in the first place. It’s weird for a tea to degrade that fast though, so I don’t know what’s up. Added vanilla agave helped a lot though. It was still kinda astringent though, which was a little bleh.
Went out for supper with my brother a few nights ago.
Against my better judgement I decided to grab a pot of tea; turns out this was literally the only kind of tea that they carried. So I mean, we were already off to a bad start in that regard. I was trying not to be a snob and be open minded though – just ‘cause a tea is bagged doesn’t mean it’s bad! But, well…
Yeah; even after adding an incredibly large amount of honey this was still horrifically bitter tasting and so unpleasant. Just so much nope in one cup. Blah.
What a shame. You’d think a restaurant would want to serve a decent tea. Maybe not a top drawer tea, but a decent tea. :(
It annoys me so much that every time I go out, all the restaurants serve such abysmal tea… even nice, top dollar restaurants. I’ve gotten to the point where I no longer feel any shame bringing in an infuser or teabag stuffed with my own leaf and ask the waiter for a pot of hot water. I make my own tea instead of being subjected to their shoddy options because they seem to have the mindset “all tea is the same.” Bah!
Next up of the teas JK Tea Shop sent me to review!
This was the one I was least looking forward to, to be honest – anyone who knows my tea tastes even remotely knows I’m not a huge green tea fan in general. However, this is a Chinese green tea and between Chinese and Japanese I think that’s my preferred when you rule out things like Genmaicha and Houjicha, which don’t taste like the typical green tea…
I brewed this up Western style; I don’t usually enjoy Gong Fu with greens and I wanted to give this one the best shot humanly possible for me to enjoy it. The aroma of the dry leaf was actually surprisingly pleasant though; sweet and somewhat floral with a bit of nuttiness to it. That made me hopeful, because those are the types of notes that usually make a green tea passable for me.
Steeped up, this was actually solid! I mean, for the sake of transparency I’m confident that this is something I would definitely not purchase for myself/wouldn’t have chosen for myself but the overall profile was nice, and not once did the tea give me ‘yuck face’ which is totally a thing that happens when I drink a lot of straight greens. I definitely agree with the company description that this is floral and sweet – and also just incredibly smooth as a whole. What I did pick on that I didn’t see mentioned, though, was again that same nutty quality I had observed in the dry aroma. I’d describe it as more of an almond thing, and I say almond because IMO that’s definitely a sweeter sort of nut and almond notes tend to have overlap with cherry/florals/sweetness in general because of the ‘marzipan’ sort of quality that comes with ’em.
I have no doubt someone who actually drinks green tea on a regular basis would love this tea; I think the profile was really smooth and pleasant and I can totally see the appeal. I’ll also probably finish my sample with relative ease – it’s just not something I’m going to turn around and buy for myself.
Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/BfRYWAtldQo/?taken-by=ros_strange
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWzh7Xg9Krw
Get It Here: https://www.jkteashop.com/
