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Brewing this, it smelt strongly Darjeeling. I wish I still had a plane Nepal tea on hand to sniff in comparison, but I finished that up a while ago. I remember it having a more Ceylon smell.

The taste is definitely more Ceylon. Bright and lightly astringent with definite honey tones. The astringency doesn’t hit right at first, but does build up with sips; it’s not sweet, more of a dry tea. Definitely not as sharp and muscatel as a Darjeeling, that seems to have just been the scent.

I don’t think I’m getting much from the wine barrel it was stored in, but that might also just be the afore-mentioned burnt tongue. Definitely not as astringent as the Nepal teas I’m used to though, so I think I’ll enjoy the rest of this.

Edit: This actually steeped up a pretty nice second cup at five minutes.

You can definitely smell the bergamot on the dry leaf. Was a bit surprised when I brewed it up—it doesn’t brew up dark like a puehr, more like a black.

But it tastes like a puer—the earthy, peatness adds a sweet undertone to the bergamot, and it works quite well for me. Though I burnt my tongue on the first sip, so I can’t say if I’ve missed anything (you’d think after several years I’d have learned to be patient in waiting for tea to cool). As it cools, the peat gives way to a bit of yunnan multiness as well. I wonder if this is a blend.

Soko’s was handing out little bagged samples of this. I haven’t had much luck with Tea Forte, but it was free, so what can you say.

It SMELLS fruity and sweet/vanilla—both dry and brewed; the blend was quite colourful, with purply petals and little dried berries.

Not getting too much fruit in the taste. Mostly vanilla and rooibos, but it’s not bad. I think the problem I’ve had with past Tea Forte teas was too much flavouring going on at the same time (so the end result was almost sharp, or chemically?), but this is mellow while still tasty.

Getting a bit more fruit while it cools. Berry. Might just be from the rooibos, though. I see it has rosehip as well.

This was a present from my sister, for my last birthday I believe. I’ve been trying to finish it for a while now, but haven’t really been able to drink it. The smell is just very offputting. I don’t really know what it is about it… It kinda reminds me of Neocitran? With other fruity scents in there. The taste itself isn’t nearly so strong, which is good. I think this is the only blend I’ve tried with green rooibos, so I don’t know if that contributes. Sort’ve fake lemon taste, though without any tang or sourness. Other fruit as well, faintly—kinda reminds me of cranberries. That’s about all I get.
Didn’t want to give it a proper rating, because even though I’ve finally finished it, I still don’t know what to think of it.

I got this as a gift a while ago, and on the bag the suggested steep parameters had been crossed out and “30 seconds” written in by hand. And, looking at the ingredients, I decided to abide by them.
Sipping it, it’s definitely something that could easily be oversteeped. Dry it smells mostly of jasmine and hibiscus (peaches?), and I get manly jasmine and peach when I sip it. I think the hibiscus is what makes the peach in this; I’m glad there doesn’t seem to be very much of it, and I can’t really taste it on its own (didn’t really see any in the bag, and the brew didn’t instantly turn pink, but you can definitely smell it), as I’m still not a huge fan of hibiscus.
This’ the last of this, as well. At thirty seconds it’s not bad (and can be resteeped); I don’t know if I’d buy it myself, though.

Forgot to review this when I first got it, so here’s some notes on my final cup of it as I remove it from my cupboard.
My first complaint that this was another of Davids’ tea with too much “stuff”. I’ve been thinking about making a teatra.de post about tea with too much “stuff”; Davids and Teavana are two companies (as well as Art Knapp’s tea, though that isn’t as known) that fall under this subject, I think. They both like their “stuff”, though they tend to keep a good ratio of tea.
But this one, and one other that I remember (cranberry pear from Davids’), had exceptionally large “stuff”. So much so that when you scooped teaspoons of it out to brew, all the little tea leaves would sink to the bottom so your first several (or most of) your cups would end up being almost caffeine-free, being made up of most of the larger ingredients. Sometimes you forget the solid base black tea provides until it’s suddenly absent from the brew.
You sort’ve have to learn to scoop a lot extra if you want to get some real tea into your drink. At any rate, the final two scoops were made up of the tea that had settled to the bottom, and I brewed it into my extra large TARDIS mug. So this last one ended up being more tea and less flavour (as opposed to my earlier cups which were a thick chocolate-coconut, but a bit watery without the good tea base).
Anyways, it’s a good mix of coconut and chocolate, and almost makes me think of white chocolate (but it’s not nearly sweet enough for that). It’s also got a good nuttyness to it—like hazelnut, except that I just brought up the ingredients list and realized there were none in here. It must be a mix of the pecans and other flavours that are making me think of hazelnuts. It actually tastes fuller because I managed to get a good bit of tea into this cup. Does remind me of macaroons (though honestly my main memory is the crunch). It’s a comforting cup.
In conclusion, I should start shaking my Davidstea bags before each use.

I took the rest of this sample and made it alongside Balhyocha MLH to do a sidebyside taste test (I knew having two gaiwans would come in handy).
*
Quite different from MLH. This one had a weaker smell, no real notes of cocoa—it had a pepper flavour that strongly resembled a Yunnan tea. I don’t have any basic Yunnans in my cupboard right now, but if I get any before I run out of this, I’ll do a comparison.
The second steep had a few more similarities to the MLH—more cocoa, slightly dryer. By the third steep though it was a bit sharp, and the cocoa was gone.
It was nice, but “meh” to me in that it was just reminiscent of Yunnan (don’t get me wrong, I like Yunnan teas; I was hoping for more).

I took the rest of this sample and made it alongside Balhyocha KSH to do a sidebyside taste test (I knew having two gaiwans would come in handy).
*
This one, I found, had a stronger scent—strong, dry cocoa. The leaves were also smaller than KSH’, but that might just be that the smaller sample bag (I had this one in sample-form and 1oz of the other) for this one crushed the leaves a bit.
It strongly reminds me of Simple Leaf’s Dawn, a tea from Arunachal Pradesh, India (/Tibet, pending claim). But I tend to compare a lot of teas to that one (mostly because I miss it so much). This definitely has some qualities.
The taste is dry but not astringent (I guess powdery); its own sort of malt without any real similarities to Assam or Yunnan teas.
I’ve gotten worse at describing teas.
It’s much different from KSH, and I definitely favour this one. At any rate, my sample’s finished.

I’m going to have to get more of this. I quite like it. Solid earl grey, with more zesty lemon-lime flavours.

I was just about to watch out of Chapters when I realized they’d started carrying Steven Smith again. Only two blacks, two greens and two herbals, of course. But they had Kandy, which they hadn’t had the last time; I almost walked out with another box of Lord Bergamot too, but decided I didn’t feel like dumping ALL my money on tea and books today.

Hadn’t had this one yet, though it was on my list. I do occasionally like plain Ceylon blends. I still miss Tealicious’ Scottish Delight. This one isn’t quite as strong as that, and and I amused myself while sitting it and thinking that it reminded me more of Murchie’s Uva Highland, before realizing that’s one of the teas listed on the back. Probably a coincidence, because I don’t ACTUALLY have the ability to tell the difference between Ceylon growing regions.

It’s not quite as sharp as some Ceylons can be. Light, but definitely still strong, but sharp, honeyed. Kandy aint a bad name.