Gold Rush

I went a step lower (185 vs 190) and a tad longer (7 minutes vs 6.5) to see if it would change the flavor.
It wasn’t bad – I drank this distractedly and didn’t end up seeing much of a difference.

A big thanks to DaisyChubb for sending me a bit of this tea.

Wow! this is really delicious.

Dry, the tea smells like coconut and berries. So, I found the flavor to be very surprising, because I don’t taste coconut or berries at the start … I taste caramel. Sweet, creamy, delicious caramel.

After a couple of sips, the coconut flavor begins to come in to focus, and the creamy sweetness of the coconut melds seamlessly with the caramel, perhaps this is why I didn’t notice the coconut at first. The mulberry adds a pleasant hint of berry flavor, with a more defined berry tone toward the finish and in the aftertaste.

A really unique, delicious tea. I’m really glad I got to try this one! Thanks again DaisyChubb! I think this one may find itself on my shopping list!

Argh, silly me, I thought this was a herbal, not a white tea! Probably something I shouldn’t be drinking at 4:22am. Regardless, thanks to Momo for sharing this in the 12 Days of Christmas swap!

Reminds me a bit of Coco Thai with the coconut. A bit of an off taste though, similarly to how it smelled. Likely the huge pieces of walnuts in this? Unsure. All I know is, the walnuts were mush by the time I got to taking it out of the water. :$

I picked up some of this tonight as a to-go cup. I had this almost a year ago, when it first came out, but I never bothered to pick up more as it was just too expensive in relation to how much I enjoyed it. Every once in a while, in a cup, it’s ok, though. It’s also one of those “teas” that doesn’t consist of a lot of leaf, and I can relax on the “steeping time” with the baggy; optimal for David’s Tea to-go cups!

There’s a good dose of coconut in this but the flavour is clearly dictated by the mulberries, a very strange, extremely sweet “golden yellow-white” berry. The Liqour smells like syrupy coconut.

On the bus ride back to the rented place, I couldn’t help but think this would make a very tasty “light beer”. I don’t know why, it’s not particularly malty, more a nutty and fruity honey flavour but it has something I associate with light sweet beers.

I love eating the wet leaves of this tea most of all. The mulberries and coconut still have their sweetness (I guess I could have done a second steep) but I ate everything too fast. So good! I know, I’m a strange one. There were actually a few white tea leaves this time around, which is very surprising for this blend!

A friend of mine works near one of the DavidsTea shops in NYC and she offered to go get me things so I could try smaller amounts. Of course I still ended up where some weren’t available in smaller amounts…one in a 50g bag and one in a 2oz bag. Then this one was .6oz and the other 3 are .5oz, but now I see why from the other notes on here!

I’m really amused right now because I convinced my boyfriend to get an electric kettle so he didn’t have to wait forever to heat water for coffee, and I’m the one using it and I’m only making tea. Now I feel like I made him get it for me to use here! I hope he uses it when I’m not around…I should turn it a certain way and see if it moves at all between visits.

I love how this smells, both dry and steeped! It’s like coconut cake!

It tastes like coconut, vanilla, and caramel. I was worried I wasn’t going to like it since people said it reminded them of Secret Weapon and I hated Secret Weapon. As it cools it gets even more like cake.

I let it steep for about 12 minutes and I plan to steep it again for even longer when I finish this cup.

And of course there is nothing that tastes even remotely like white tea present. That makes two teas that I would so get again if they weren’t $11.50 and would be better suited to just leaving out the white tea :[ Especially since this one is so bulky, I’ll be curious to see how many cups I can even get out of it. Looks though like it may be good for 2 steeps so that might help slightly.

Ok, second steep time. I also just ate one of the mulberries because I’ve never had a mulberry and at this point it just tasted like a weird version of this tea. Second steep seems creamier, with a nice caramel aftertaste that’s not too strong. Still really good, but probably would not do much on a third steep especially because I think I let this steep for close to 20 min. The end of the first cup was really fruity, it surprised me.

I liked this, but was expecting more from it. It definitely has a nice creamy caramel flavour going for it. And I was expecting it to be heavy on the additions and light on the tea from others’ reviews, but I actually didn’t expect this! It was basically all mulberries with a few coconut shavings and a very few tea leaves. Something about paying 11.50 for, basically, 50 grams of dried berries with some added flavouring does not sit right with me. And paying what seems to be the “white tea” price for something that is really just honorarily a white tea is also silly. I think if this was priced as an herbal it would still be obscene, but more affordable.

It was tasty but not outstanding, and I feel ripped off so wouldn’t buy it again. While I found it underwhelming, though, the man-of-the-house volunteered that it was “really good” (as opposed to his usual “it’s good” when prompted). But the berry carnage in the Breville’s brewing basket freaked him out when I asked him to go make the next batch of tea.

One step forward, six steps back…

By which I mean I’m drinking up the last of this, but just added 6 more to my cupboard. So much for “down to 100 or less by the 7th.” Oh well. At least I’ve learned my lesson by now about buying more than sample sizes of anything first-try. (With the exception of Teaopia’s Love Spell, since I’ve never had it before, and it won’t be available soon – may as well just go for the 50g, I know it’s good.) So most of those additions to my cupboard won’t be around for long.

[ Edit: Just discovered that Love Spell is apparently one of Teaopia’s “top 20,” so they are keeping it after all.]

This one is SO good, and a definite re-purchase at some point, even though it is stupidly expensive despite having barely any tea in it. (It is pretty hard to dent my high opinion of DAVIDsTEA, but these days even I have to wince when I open my bag or tin at home and discover, say, the half a slice of dried orange I found in my tin of Mango Madness. Seriously, I paid for the weight of that? What the hell am I even going to DO with that, use it as a cocktail garnish?!)

This is so creamy – especially sweetened with honey, which always adds to or brings out creaminess in teas – and like I said, I love creaminess! Creamy coconut is really the strongest impression I get from this one. Other people have said “caramel” and I get where that’s coming from, but I don’t know if it’s the first description I would have used if I hadn’t seen other people describe this tea that way. Perhaps if you could imagine a fruity version of caramel; that’s what this tastes like. There’s a sweet fruitiness to it under the cream and coconut.

So I guess that’s the mulberries. Although, to be honest, I’ve never had a mulberry. So I’m not sure exactly what they are adding to this tea other than that fruity note.

I decided to try for two steeps of my last leaf of this, so I steeped the first cup for 5 minutes and the second cup for 9, both around 90 degrees. I honestly expected the first cup to be weak, but it really wasn’t…and in the second, if I concentrate, I actually faintly taste the Bai Mu Dan-which-barely-was.

In other news, Tea Annoyances, it really sucks when “your” bathroom in the house is also the main bathroom because you drew the short straw for bedrooms and are the only member of the household without your own bathroom…so everyone uses your bathroom to shower, have baths, shave their legs for two hours, etc. AND YOU DRINK A LOT OF TEA.

I used 1.25 tablespoons for 275 ml of water.

The longer infusion time does not produce any bitterness. I would chance infusing this tea for a longer period of time to see if the flavour profile can be enhaced further.

Getting to the last of my bag of this.

I think I’ve picked some kind of bug, I’m all inflamed and uncomfortable in the tummy. Ugh.

So a tasty beautiful tea it is. I’m on to my third steep and I think that’s it for this cup. This one is smooth and beautiful.

I cheated on this one this morning. Made a cup for my wife and didn’t use enough, and when I made it for myself I just added more leaves to the already-used infuser. Anyway.

This tea is such a sweet, mellow, smooth mouthful. I don’t want to gulp and yet I find that I can’t help it. There is a delicateness about the flavour that I usually wouldn’t ascribe to creamy blends – that I wouldn’t ascribe to blends at all, in fact. It’s a very naturally teased out taste.

y u no cheaper, Gold Rush?