17132 Tasting Notes
Gongfu!
I enjoyed this outdoor session paired with some bright and tangy passion fruit! I drink a lot of smoked teas, many of which are a lot more experimental. This is such a beautiful, classic and grounding lapsang though. Full bodied and almost a little syrupy in terms of liquor, with a brisk upfront woody smoke that bleeds sweet and mouth-coating notes of lingering anise in the finish. Contrasted with such an intense tropical punch of flavour I find that the edge of the smokiness it matched and, by proxy, that almost feels to soften it. Meanwhile, the finish and aftertaste seem even sweeter. For both the tea and the fruit. Definitely a combo that evokes feelings of summer BBQS with different grilled fruits. Succulent, sweet and tender in a way that leaves your mouth salivating! Cannot wait for that warmer weather to hit!
Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DIexPo7S_E6/?img_index=1
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoUvuIx4Bcs&ab_channel=NightTapes
…and I’m caught up!
I’m currently just finishing off a mug of this tea, which I’ve been slurping on since starting to write my trip tasting notes a few hours ago. It’s one of the blends we brought back with us, and I’m enjoying it even if I find the flavour combination quite familiar. Brisk, full-bodied black tea with fresh, smooth notes of garden roses. I’m a sucker for a rose black tea, but this is definitely a profile I’ve tasted countless times and can get elsewhere. The naming, however, is quite clever.
This was served to us by one of the people we’d visited during the trip who had brought it back from the World Tea Expo just a few weeks prior. I’ve had compressed oolong before, but never something as roasted as this one and I just found the flavour incredibly smooth with some darker nutty notes and elements of charcoal/stone that I really enjoyed. Just a bit of a plummy and orchid-like undertone, too! He kindly offered me one of the sticks to take home with me, so I’m excited to see how it tastes brewed gongfu, given that this was Western in a very large teapot.
Picked up from a cafe we stopped at before boarding the train from Hamburg to Bamburg. We grabbed some takeaway so we’d have lunch on the trip, and I added in a bottle of this local iced tea that I ended up drinking before we’d even gotten on the train.
It was a little sweet for my liking, but also quite juicy and refreshing. I really like iced or cold brewed rooibos, and I thought this one had a fantastic natural red fruit note that suited that punchier, sweet and tropical passionfruit flavour that made up the bulk of the drink. I think about a third or half as sweet and it would have been really quite perfect!
I had this one with breakfast on our last morning in Hamburg. In hindsight I maybe wish I’d picked something caffeinated from the breakfast bar because we ended up having the most AWFUL experience in the train from Hamburg to Bamberg. The one we were supposed to take got cancelled after an hour into our four hour train ride, and then the one we transferred to was cancelled fifteen minutes in and we had to make a mad dash in a PACKED station to catch our third train in less than two hours to make it to our destination…
This was also probably the best bagged tea that I had the whole trip though, so maybe I don’t regret it. It very much tasted like a liquid creamsicle, but with just the right amount of sweetness and without masking the light, honey-like taste of the rooibos either. So smooth and silky with sweet cream and orange sherbet notes to die for!
I am so sorry you had such a bad experience with Deutsche Bahn. Sadly, it seems it is more and more common there. As I experienced myself: “When it works, it works just perfectly. If anything goes wrong, it became chaos and there is no customer service. Nor a common sense by DB staff.”
Another evening hotel cuppa gleefully indulged in on our second night in Hamburg. This hotel had a MASSIVE bathtub in it and after several days spent speed walking around cities, in long meetings, and very late night dinners (like, we’re talking an average of maybe four hours of sleep each night) I was running in adrenaline, caffeine, and sheer will powder. So, a long soak in the tub with a soul soothing mug of peppermint tea!? That sounded like a spa day to me. This was the evening we had the most wind down time in the evening, and even then it was maybe only an hour or two. I took full advantage. Was it an amazing quality peppermint? No, but it was an amazing experience considering all the environmental factors leading up to those first few sips.
The best of the three hotels we stayed at was in Hamburg. It had the comfiest bed, an electric kettle straight in the room, and the best breakfast service in the morning. Probably the best breakfast service of ANY hotel I’ve stayed at.
Though I certainly had more than enough teas from London that I could have made in the hotel, they also had an in room selection of bagged teas and I decided to sip my way through the hotel offerings first. Trying new things, an’ all. This was exactly what I’d expected. Strong and hibiscus forward with a mix of tartness and a more jammy or jello-esque red berry note. Mostly strawberry, if I had to name one. Not anything exciting, but a hot cup of anything is really nice after a long day so I wasn’t one to complain.
Cold Brew!
I’d brought a few Maple Syrup Oolong sachets with me while traveling, and I ended up leaving them to cold brew in the mini fridge of one of the hotels we stayed multiple nights at. I cannot express enough how soothing for the soul it was to wake up in the morning having a glass of tea ready to drink first thing. Our schedule was so packed and those SMALL half hour windows we had at the hotel in the morning and evenings each night were so precious. The sweet maple and nutty oolong notes felt like liquid gold on my raw (from talking so much) throat that morning. It was such a treat and indulgence.
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 and feelings regarding the teas, and not the company’s.
I brought a few stick packs of matcha with me for this trip, and though I didn’t really end up drinking a lot of the tea I’d packed with me I did end up putting the matcha to good use by shaking one of the packs up in a complimentary water bottle that was provided on my flight from London to Hamburg.
London was a day spent shopping, but the rest of the trip was more of a sit down and work situation. Considering how early the flight was and the fact we were heading straight into meetings, I definitely needed the refresh and energy.
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 and feelings regarding the teas, and not the company’s.
Flavors: Candy, Fresh, Jam, Strawberry
This was my favourite of the three. It was also very bright and fresh tasting with an incredibly natural, lively and lightly tart note of raspberries picked straight from the bush with a semi-sweet, citrusy lemon finish. Of all the three, this was the only flavour where I felt I tasted all the named (on the front of can) ingredients – and it was in a very balanced way. Still not a particularly “tea-like” drink but it was very nice nonetheless.
