Manuka Honey Hero (Formerly Honeycomb Chai)

Strange VariaTEA TTB: Tea 26

The good thing is I think I can taste teas. The bad news is, it’s because I’m really not liking how this tastes. I think it’s just overly sweet from probably the liquorice and it’s just not working for me. It is helping to suppress the cough though and for that, I’m thankful.

This one gets terrible reviews, so I didn’t have high expectations. It tastes overwhelmingly like licorice root, which is a flavor I usually enjoy, but not as much in this context. The next flavor I taste is ginger. It has a lot of natural sweetness. It’s not a very hearty chai, more like an herbal bagged spiced tea. Its flavor is sort of weird and not entirely pleasant. I’ve tried mixing it with other teas, but it still shows up too strongly for my preference.

I really like this tea. Probably because it has licorice in it. It’s been a nice tea to have around in the evenings when I need a tasty decaf option. The licorice adds sweetness without the stevia weirdness and the whole thing does have a light honey flavor to it. One of these days I need to add some real honey in it. I got to harvest a few frames recently from one of my 6 beehives, so I’m rich in honey at the moment!

Prepared this one as a latte with almond milk. I don’t love this one and it doesn’t come across as a honeycomb chai. Instead, it tastes like a licorice spice tea. It’s quite cloying from the licorice.

I really wanted to like this tea, because I love honey and chai, but it tasted too strongly of licorice for me to enjoy it. I tried it both hot steeped and as a hot latte with one pump of vanilla syrup.

Tried this again under the new name and it was pleasant at first but yeah unfortunately the licorice is just too strong for my liking

(DavidsTea 164)

Another tea I shouldn’t be drinking, this time because of licorice. :/ At least in this case, that will be easy to achieve because I really did not care for this one. I made it into a latte and even then, it was way too sweet from the licorice, honey, and other spices, and I just didn’t like the flavour combination. Too bad, because the name sounds really appealing!

Another new one from the Autumn Subscription box!

Honey flavouring is really, really hit or miss for me – there are DT blends that I’ve loved it in (like Honey Drop) and others where I’ve found it way too heavy handed (like Honey Lullaby). However, even though I much prefer a “cream honey” or darker more buckwheat style honey, I feel like this blend has found the right balance in terms of the level of the honey flavouring. It’s clear and sweet but, at least for my taste preferences, not too sweet. With that said, I still kind of go back and forth on whether I love the blend as a whole…

We all know that I’m fickle when it comes to Chai in general, and I personally am way over that very “red hot” style of cinnamon that is present in blends like Cinnamon Rooibos Chai, Cinnamon Bun Chai, and Glitter Chai. I know that many, many people enjoy it – and admittedly so do I at spaced out intervals – but I also find that it really swallows up flavours and can quickly get too strong. For me, that’s the main spice in this blend and it even kind of drowns out the ginger to me – and that’s a spice that usually sticks out like a sort thumb in most blends for me. So, I feel this “push and pull” between my love of the honey flavouring used and just being a little tired of this type of cinnamon note.

Aside from that, it’s a pretty fruity chai all things considered – and that makes sense to me composition-wise because it’s herbal and you need some type of “base” herbal ingredient. However, I just feel like the added sweetness of the apple on top of the honey and the sweet cinnamon is… maybe a bit much?? Like, I would have preferred something like a black tea base with more body to it – though that defeats the purpose of having more caffeine free chai options, I suppose.

All of this is, of course, subjective and personal preference. As much as I might love black tea someone else out there is probably thinking “I’m so glad they didn’t make another black chai blend”, just like how someone else might think “Wow this is too much honey” or someone else “This should be sweeter for a honey inspired blend”. It’s so hard to find something that works for everyone, and I think that this is just a really tricky type of profile because you have to take a big swing in a flavour direction because the middle ground is just gonna be flat/boring.

Idk – all just stuff that pops into my head when I drink this blend…

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.