16967 Tasting Notes
Gongfu Sipdown (2790)!
Drank this while reading the latest issue of Eighty Degrees! It’s not a secret that I’m not really a huge Japanese green tea fan aside from my vocal love of roasted green teas, and I can’t even remember how I ended up with this particular tea sample. However, it’s clearly a nice gyokuro and I found that it was pretty inoffensive to my palate given that it’s not something I’d typically be brewing. Very, veeerrryyy smooth and buttery mouthfeel with a really unctuous and fatty profile with strong notes of nori, spinach, and miso. Really just an explosion of broth and umami, and were it not for those greener, oceanic elements I feel like I could get really into this. But those seaweed and leafy green flavours just aren’t for me, and that’s okay!
It was still a solid accompaniment to a laid back morning flipping through the different articles and photo series in this issue!!
Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DGbjJOdyrEy/?img_index=1
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSjUEiBIonE&ab_channel=TheCriticals
Since first trying this tea, I’ve fallen quite in love with goishicha. This fermented Japanese tea is just such a fantastically funky, fruity tea with such a deliciously tart, tangy sort of flavour. Notes of apple cider vinegar, pickled plums, lemon, and the sort of lactic acid taste of something like a Greek yogurt or Yakult yogurt drink. All with a somewhat smoky and tobacco-like green undertone. It’s A LOT, but in a good kind of way. The kind of way that makes it the perfect pairing for a manga like Chainsaw Man that jumps in tone so frequently.
Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DGd9-NpSGmb/?img_index=1
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2NkXPv-stc&ab_channel=onlyrealtv
Gongfu!
Started my morning with one of the best heicha tea sessions I’ve had in a very, very long time. It’s so thick and rich in cooling menthol and camphor notes, with a punch of medicinal and forest-y flavour, and really tingly, mouth numbing spice undertones of clove, cassia oil, and black cardamom alongside bittersweet dark chocolate. Despite all of that, the mouthfeel is really creamy. It’s just so flavourful but with such a visceral mouth sensation and body feel. I don’t know if I’ve been this glowy and tea drunk feeling in a while…
Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DGgq63PSr7h/?img_index=1
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i39g22RiTqA&ab_channel=CigarettesAfterSex
Iced!
Doubled up on the stick packs once again to be able to make a very large tumbler worth of this. I’m getting quite close once again to finishing it off, and now I have to decide whether I want to repurchase for a third time. The tangy, deep red flavour of the pomegranate and punch of ACV is so satisfying and I feel like I always am in a better mood after finishing a cup of this off. Plus, I do really like having it as a probiotic source.
Just… so expensive.
I got an order from Volition earlier this week with Qing Snake (their lunar new year tea) and their third gin barrel aged white, and this was included as a small sample with the order! I’m not sure when I’ll be ordering from them again because, even though I adore their teas, the shipping amount to Canada is about as expensive as the teas themselves and with the impending tariff situation I feel like it might get worse…
So, all that said, it was nice to get a little bit of a top of for my tin of this tea, which I already owned from buying the whole Trapped In Amber series last year. I made a mug Western-style for my commute home from work yesterday. I have to say that, while this probably is a tea better brewed gongfu, there was something deeply satisfying about sipping on the smooth vanilla, maple, and oak-y flavours of this brew while trudging through feet worth of snow on the streets. A cup of something hot with a little bit of whisky is in a lot of ways exactly what you want to come home to after such an extreme Canadian cold, but having that comfort during the commute? Yeah, very nice for the soul.
If anyone remember the older ceramic latte mugs from DT (like, the 30-ish ounce ones), I have one of those in my office at the tea lab and I’ve been using it quite a lot lately to make a big amount of one tea at a time when I know I won’t have a chance to get up and make another mug for a while…
I ended up doing that with this one earlier in the week, but primarily because I wanted to pick out a tea I’d like to finish off sooner rather than later. This is a fine blend overall with a thicker kind of cream note and a bit of sweet almond alongside (primarily) cardamom. Maybe a few other spices, too. However, it’s probably one of the more underwhelming blends I have from Magic Hour and something about the mouthfeel kind of bugs me in a way I struggle to describe.
It made for a fine tasting cup, but I was mostly just glad to have finished a large chunk of the bag off. Not quite a sipdown – but soon, I think!
Sipdown (2791)!
For the most part I’ve finished off these samples from the Plum Deluxe advent, but I have a small amount of straggler samples that I want to focus on finishing off. I vaguely remember being somewhat unimpressed by this tea when I first tried it, but I thought this mug was pretty solid! Not mind blowing, but smooth with a gentle roast and minerality from the oolong that suited the sweeter marzipan-like nuttiness of the almond and the sort of creamy undertones and finish. At times it gave cherry, as almond is want to do, and I didn’t mind that at all.
Cold Brew!
I drank so much of this on Thursday. Someone recently gave me what is essentially one of the big Stanley Cups (but not Stanley brand) and I’m honestly not super sure how I feel about it. I decided to make this cold brew in it to give me something to drink throughout the afternoon while I was working and turns out that 40oz of one tea is just a lot. Maybe too much?? I mean, I adore the smooth and buttery coconut notes of this oolong on its more delicate, floral base. Like, a lot. But I was prettttyyyy sick of it by the time I’d finished it off.
I’m gonna give it another go or two, but right now I’m not suuupppeerrrr sold on the vessel. Maybe I just need to try it with a different flavour direction of tea!?
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.
Speaking of big insulated metal mugs… I just have to admit, whether drinking tea or coffee (or frozen daiquiri), I don’t enjoy the beverage as much from metal as I do from porcelain (or glass). It’s probably in large part to do with how the vessel feels in my hand, but somehow I feel it just tastes better. I don’t know why. Do you think a similar effect may be at play here? I mean, long ago I began to simply refuse martinis unless presented in a stemmed martini glass! The experience matters to me.
I had to get a work thermos that has a ceramic “core” on the inside and is only metal on the outside for that very reason. The metals and/or plastics made the tea taste funny to me. Now I have the benefit of the heat retention from the metal layer on the outside, but the inner part of the thermos where the tea goes is the same ceramic you’d find in a standard coffee mug.
I’m drinking it Western style today in a big ol’ mug, and it’s been interesting. A little bit of a lighter body than expected, with top notes a little on the more dark and fruity side but with a bit of molasses in the mix, too. Raisins, dates, fig jam, and jujube. The body is smooth almost to a fault, with clean earthy notes and a woodiness that makes me think of the pine-y sawdust smell of my grandfather’s workshop. It’s not bad at all, but I am finding it just a little bit flat. The fruit could be richer or more syrupy, and the earth and wood notes more dank or mineral-rich. Instead, everything comes off a touch too polished. Perhaps it’s the brewing method, or maybe it needs to keep chilling for a while before it’ll come into its own. For right now, though, this ripe pu’erh is really just leaving me rather “whelmed” feeling. Has anyone else tried this? What were your thoughts?
Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DGRRdTaSmlF/?img_index=1
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc1MzpV1XcI&ab_channel=IndiETrap
Gongfu!
I’ve been really into Taiwanese teas lately, and Ruby-18 was one of the first styles of black tea I truly fell in love with, so it’s been especially nice surrounding myself with them as of late. This is an exceptionally smooth and full-bodied one that practically feels like it’s dripping with that hallmark refreshing and ever so slightly cooling wintergreen note. It makes for such a round, mouth-coating brewing experience with carefully interlocked notes of sweet malty breads, candied yams, lush but darkly sweet red fruits, and just a hint of carob after the initial wintergreen passes. I do very much love though that, because of the lightly cooling menthol finish, you really get this sort of “wintergreen sandwich” that bookends the sip. I’ve purchased from Cha Gloriette the last few years, though usually oolongs. This is the first black tea of theirs to make it home with me, and I am nothing short of impressed!
Also, I know I’ve had a lot of TO Tea Fest posts lately, but I’m really committed to sipping my way through everything I picked up, which was, frankly, a lot! So thank y’all for coming along on the post-festival tea review journey!
Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DGT6vb8yrsT/?img_index=1
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHtkrEwk8ps&ab_channel=ToneTreeMusic
