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Midweek post-work Gong Fu session!

This is one of those teas that is perfect for an evening Gong Fu session because it’s technically herbal and caffeine free, but I still get the “feeling” of drinking tea and the ritual of brewing Gong Fu without the caffeine boost.

As always, the tea was very sweet and floral – even from the first infusion. I only steeped like six infusions because it was late and I needed to get a good rest for the busy day ahead of me – but the profile really didn’t change much at all throughout the infusions, aside from getting a smidge less sweet over time. Still tasted like drinking a mix of elderflower and honeysuckle dipped in sugar water. Mmm!

Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/BwA_c77lFG1/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAkvb2Rhces

Sipdown (594)!

Finished off this DT Oldie as an iced latte – and it was a sad moment; this is definitely one of the better pumpkin teas that DT has done, IMO. The iced latte was amazing though; definitely still rich and sweet but with a denseness to it and a bit of malt. It’s kind of a pumpkin molasses flavour, and I find it pretty similar to a molasses heavy/chewier sorta ginger snap cookie? When I was like three or four years old, my mom used to drop me off at a family friend’s farm and their older daughter would babysit me. I don’t really remember much of it – I mean, I was four. Just sort of walking around and looking at horses, these horrifying “bedtime” stories she would make up about a psychotic rooster, and that she made the BEST gingersnap cookies. I mean, I’m sure I’m glorifying them a little bit in my head – but I do kind of feel like even today I’ve never tasted a ginger snap better than the molasses-y, dark ones she used to make. This iced latte reminded me of lot of my memory of those cookies…

Sad, sad sipdown.

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.

Tried to Grandpa brew one of these little compressed cakes/pillows of oolong yesterday while I was crunching some numbers – I forgot just how small the majority of the leaves in this cake are though, and how light they are so I kept getting these tiny leaves or broken leaf fragments floating on the surface of the mug I was using which was annoying the drink from. I didn’t want to be literally drinking the tea leaves…

It also got pretty bitter pretty quickly, and topping up with fresh water wasn’t really seeming it fix that problem – so it just made for a bitter mug of very floral and very green oolong. Not the best experience at all. Some teas just don’t work Grandpa style though.

Iced tea with milk! Reminded me a little bit of Dairy Queen’s Cotton Candy blizzard flavour that they bring back most summers – but less sweet. That’s a good comparison, for the record – especially the less sweet part. Really enjoyed this one!

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.

Another tea that is being retired – but only in Canada, this will continue to be sold in the US/Online. This cup was iced, and with a pump and a half of agave because I found it had come out pretty bitter tasting, and very pithy. With the agave it was much better; a little bit more like a “Ready to Drink” style lemon black tea, but very natural lemon.

I can’t wax poetic about all the teas being retired; it’s just not realistic. I didn’t love them all. This is one of those ones that I just never personally really loved; and I’ve been saying for probably years now that DT simply has too many lemon teas so I’m actually kind of happy to see some of them gone now. There are definitely positives to keeping it in the US in my opinion; it’s modelled after Southern Style Sweet Tea/Lemon Iced Tea and that’s a crazy popular flavour in the US so there’s definitely a bigger market for the tea there. I also just feel like there aren’t a ton of fruity black teas right now, so until there are more I think not completely retiring this one is a good call.

I’m sorry for the people out there who were really into this one – it sucks when you lose a favourite. But yeah, this one didn’t phase me.

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’ve been eyeing up this maple tea ever since CS announced/released it – and thankfully one of my coworkers went out and bought some before I had a chance to, otherwise I would have gone and got some for myself and wound up with 50g of a tea I just am not really into. Like, the dry leaf smelled good – natural maple and a little bit woody/malty. I just found the steeped profile very underwhelming. I know this is natural maple/not really flavoured at all so I didn’t expect anything overly intense – but the maple was so weak/light and not particularly sweet at all. I mean, the black tea base they’ve mixed it with is quite nice: woody, malty and a little bit of a honey taste. However, since the maple didn’t really bring much to the table for me I might as well have just sought out the base itself and drunk that instead…

But now I know, and at least I didn’t blind buy 50g of it.

I packed up a tea swap last night (first time in a while I’ve done so – but in this case I’m trading tea for art), and I of course needed something to drink while I was packaging everything. So, I made a Honeydew Matcha latte – but the only milk I had in the house at the moment was Cashew Milk so I hesitantly made it with cashew milk. The flavours did NOT go together, and I would not recommend replicating my experiment. Nutty honeydew is a hard, hard pass.

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.

Another tea that is being retired – but only in Canada, it will still be sold in the US/Online.

Sadly, this is probably my favourite of all DT’s flavoured matchas – the only one I might possibly like more is Blueberry, but that one was only limited edition anyway. I can’t say I really understand why we’re getting rid of this flavour of matcha in particular – I think it sells fairly well? I could definitely be wrong though. I do, however, think tidying up the flavoured matcha section was probably a good idea; it can be really intimidating/overwhelming to look at if you’re someone not familiar with matcha or just sort of getting into it. Plus just through my own observations of the teas that have come out in 2019, it looks like there’s going to be more of a shift towards having more matcha incorporated into different seasonal collections – so that will maybe still allow for some variety? We’ll see…

I drank this cup of matcha on my way in to work today, and because I have been bitten by the “Oat Milk” bug/boughten into the oat milk hype I had it with a splash of oat milk. I find, personally, that this matcha has always reminded me a little bit of a Strawberry milkshake because of the sweetness and creaminess, but with the added oat milk it was almost like drinking a strawberry protein shake? Very, very good though!

I have a small stash of this in my collection and I have SO MUCH matcha right now that I don’t go through it that quickly, so I don’t know that I’m personally going to stock up on this one – but that doesn’t mean I’m any less sad about its departure here in Canada.

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.

So, this tea was recently announced as being retired – something I’m personally a little upset about, for two reasons. The first is just that I simply really enjoy this tea, but the second is mostly just because removing it from the tea wall means that there are no longer any straight teas in the Mate/Guayusa/Yaupon section of the wall…

I kind of get it though; it’s not like this is a heavy hitter for DT in terms of sales and, on top of that, I know that DT has had issues in the past with sourcing larger quantities of this tea at the same, consistent quality. I know there was a point where I was working in store where we were back ordered on this tea for about five months straight… So, I’m purely speculating but I do feel like if the situation is that it’s becoming more timely/costly to get the quantity and quality of this tea needed to sell it year round than it actually brings in sales wise then (to me, at least) it probably is smarter to just not carry it. I hope it’ll be replaced with something else though – like a straight mate or even a roasted one. Not yaupon though – please not yaupon.

This mug definitely isn’t going to be my last mug of it – I have a small stash of this at home and will likely be sure to acquire more of it in the next few weeks since it’s one I know I enjoy a lot. This mug was sweet and earthy, with a bit of a buttery finish. Rainforest. My dear, beloved rainforest tea!

So sad.

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.

Welp – no easy way to say it but there are a TON of teas that were officially announced as being retired by the end of April. I will get a tasting note up for each one so that there’s an entry here on Steepster officially confirming each has been retired (as I usually do), but seeing as this announcement has basically been dubbed the “Red Wedding” of tea retirements it’ll probably take me longer than usual…

I’m going to post the lists here too though – just as a placeholder until each tasting note is up. This announcement is a little bit different anyway, as there are some teas being retired in both Canada and in the United States but also a few teas that will only be retired in one of the two countries. Also, everything will be online for a while – so there should be time to stock up online if you’re not able to make it in to a store right away. There are a couple teas here that I’m pretty upset about just personally speaking, but knowing some of the rational behind the decisions has helped me to mentally process a bit. There were also just so many teas on the wall that people honestly just couldn’t keep track of them…

So without further ado…

These teas will be retiring ONLY in the US:
- Jasmine Creme Brulee
- Raspberry Cream Pie
- English Toffee

These teas will be retiring ONLY in Canada:
- Strawberry Matcha
- Midsummer Night’s Dream
- Blackberry Blizzard
- Jasmine Black Pearls
- Honeycrisp Apple
- The Glow
- La La Lemon

These teas are retiring in BOTH Canada and in the US:
- Turmeric Glow
- Strawberry Colada
- Long Life Oolong
- Ginger Pear
- Pura Vida
- Chocolate Rocket
- Seaberry Spa
- Grapefruit Granita
- Honeydew Matcha
- Bear Trap
- Guava Cadabra
- Live Wire Lemon
- Toasted Walnut
- Cherry Blossom
- Happy Kombucha
- Dream On
- Mint Matcha
- Sweet Ginger Heat
- Mighty Aphrodite
- Guayusa
- Kenyan Tinderet
- Silken Pu’erh

So, there’s that…

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.