46 Tasting Notes

60
drank Snow Day by DAVIDsTEA
46 tasting notes

Day 1 of the 2016 Advent Calendar, finally! I am a bit surprised to see this one so early compared to last year, but I don’t mind at all. I know that apparently people just aren’t a fan of this tea but I remember liking it, so we’ll see how this year’s batch holds up. In terms of smell, it’s basically just mint chocolate as I would hope. It’s very similar to the Hershey’s candy cane kisses in my opinion.

Steeped, the color turns into a greenish brown and it smells much stronger of mint. The taste is… a bit different than what I had hoped for. It’s very much mint chocolate, but the mint tastes almost a bit off to me. The sip at first is so good, it’s exactly what I want from a wintery chocolate-mint tea, but the taste very quickly becomes strange, almost metallic and leafy? The later sips seem to lose their charm as well it seems.

Overall, this tea is a bit polarizing to me. I love the first sips of it, but very quickly the weird aftertaste just takes over and ruins it for me. It’s hard to say if I really like this tea, but ultimately I think it’s one that I’ll bench in favor of better mint chocolate blends.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 4 min, 0 sec 1 tsp 8 OZ / 236 ML

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80

Day 20 of the 2015 Advent Calender (Only 1 tea left!). A jasmine tea with blackberry? Sign me up! The dry leaf smell is… very much green tea. I was hoping for more jasmine and blackberry but that might change in the actual steeped tea.

Steeped, the tea definitely smells a lot fruitier, which is quite nice. The taste is very delicate, the most dominant flavor is the green tea base, followed by some blackberry at the end. Sadly I’m not really getting the jasmine, but I am still very much enjoying this tea.

I hope that David’s brings this back sometime because this is a really nice green tea in my opinion, and I’d love to try it over ice sometime.

Preparation
185 °F / 85 °C 4 min, 0 sec 1 tsp 8 OZ / 236 ML

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55

Day 23 of the 2015 Advent Calendar. I love the idea of this tea personally, but then again I love gingerbread in general so I suppose that’s to be expected. In terms of smell, I don’t know how to describe it other than well… Gingerbread Cookie ahaha. Although I do smell the mate base I think.

The tea itself brews into a really pretty amber colour, but I might attribute that to the rooibos that I believe is in the tea. Taste wise I wouldn’t really consider this ‘gingerbread’. For some reason its fruity and almost molassesy. I can definitely also taste the rooibos in this as well. Not getting the mate really, but I’m not a fan of the taste so I can’t say I mind.

Overall I feel like this tea was a bit of a letdown. The flavor itself isn’t… bad but I kind of expected a lot more from it. The aftertaste isn’t particularly nice either. I can see why David’s did not bring this one back. I’ll be sticking to Teavana’s take on Gingerbread, personally.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 4 min, 0 sec 1 tsp 8 OZ / 236 ML

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70

Day 19 of the 2015 Advent Calendar (I’m so close!). I have had a rocky relationship with chocolate teas, because I find that they are very hit or miss with me. This tea seems good though, it smells extremely chocolatey, and has some sweet fruity notes to it. Oddly, it kind of reminds me of root beer?

When steeped the color is… about the same as a standard black tea. For some reason I was expecting something darker? Regardless, the black tea base comes through a lot stronger in the smell of the steeped tea. The flavor itself is quite interesting. I was expecting something a lot… bolder, but I’m not necessarily complaining about this flavor profile. For me the black tea is the dominant flavor, followed by some light, almost milk-chocolatey notes.

Overall, I think it’s a good tea. Not quite what I expected, but I still think that this is a solid chocolate tea that I might consider stocking up on if I have a craving for it.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 4 min, 30 sec 1 tsp 8 OZ / 236 ML

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70

I have a peculiar relationship with this tea because its one of the first teas that I had when I got into tea. I think I’m a bit partial to this tea because I have such fond memories of it even if I never brewed it right when I was starting out. I hope they bring it back sometime, even if this tea wasn’t the most well received.

The dry leaf smells strongly of cinnamon and the sarsaparilla, not necessarily a root beer float smell to me, but its not not a root beer smell. It brewed up nicely but it sure made my steeper smell like it. That aside, I think that with sugar this tea works pretty well. The sarsaparilla comes out a bit more, and the spicy hit of cinnamon accents it well. Sadly the flavors are pretty strong so it’s hard for me to get much of the black tea base, or the vanilla/white chocolate. Overall I enjoyed having this around to make iced, and I’m sad to see it gone.

Preparation
Iced 5 min, 0 sec 2 tsp 16 OZ / 473 ML

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80

Is it just me or does David’s have a tendency to make a lot of their cake teas very similar? I’ve had both Coffee Cake and Birthday cake before and it’s kind of interesting just how similar this one is to both of them. Perhaps I should be more mindful of my smelling to take note of the subtle differences.

Overall, this tea smells well, like cake? I’m not entirely sure what a red velvet cake is supposed to smell like in particular but its good at least. Even though the leaf was like 2 years ago it kept a lot of its flavor which is surprising, in a good way. I find that it tastes a lot like it smells, like cake. I don’t really taste the black tea base and its not as full-bodied as I would like but I think its something I’ll pick up again sometime when I have room in my tea cupboard.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 4 min, 0 sec 2 tsp 12 OZ / 354 ML

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65
drank Mulled Wine by DAVIDsTEA
46 tasting notes

Day 17 of 2015’s 24 Days of Tea. Despite many people saying that this tea smells like bubble gum, I don’t really get that. To me it smells closer to just generic Christmas spice blends, which is hopefully to be expected considering the ingredients. I had this with my dinner tonight and I have mixed feelings about this tea.

The most obvious flavor in this tea to me is the oolong base surprisingly, I thought that the spices would have drowned out any flavor of it, although there is a lot of clove flavor in the aftertaste. I do get a bit of orange in the background but not much else, aside from some cinnamon as well.

The unfortunate thing to me about this tea is that is tastes very… watered down? The whole flavor profile is pretty weak, and unfortunately since I only have the tin from the advent calendar I can’t do any more experimenting. Based on the cup I tasted I can’t say I’m particularly sad to see that this tea did not make a comeback.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 4 min, 0 sec 1 tsp 8 OZ / 236 ML

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75
drank Goji Pop by DAVIDsTEA
46 tasting notes

David’s wound up giving me two free samples of this with my last order by accident so I figured I’d brew this iced with my lunch today. The dry leaf smelled a lot like candy to be honest, I felt like it could make a decent starburst flavor. When I steeped it the color was less of a pink and more of a yellow-orange color, but I might attribute that to the fact that I just used two sample packs to make it. The smell of the brewed tea was essentially the same as the dry leaf, and the taste was pretty similar as well. However, I found that the taste was a bit… weaker? As I said, I did this up with sample packs alone which may be the cause. Perhaps if I do pick this tea up in the future I’ll do it with more of the tea, and for a bit longer.

Preparation
Iced 4 min, 0 sec 2 tsp 16 OZ / 473 ML

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93

First off, I CANNOT believe that David’s actually discontinued this tea. At first at thought it may have been because it was so similar to Buttered Rum, but alas, they’ve gone and discontinued that one too. But, I digress. The dry leaf smell for this is heavenly, I wasn’t sure how much I would like the mixture of coconut and raspberry but it works really well.

Steeped, the aroma of the black base of the tea comes to the front for me followed by the raspberry. Despite being quite prominent in the dry leaf smell, the coconut seems to have taken a backseat. In terms of actual taste, I think that this tea is excellent. The overall balance of the flavours is spot-on. The black tea is a perfect base with light accents of the coconut and some raspberry on the aftertaste.

I’m sad that David’s has discontinued this tea because I would have like to at least stock up on it, but it was discontinued when I was new to David’s and didn’t know that they permanently discontinued teas. Maybe one day it will be brought back, but until then all I can do is savor this last cup.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 4 min, 30 sec 1 tsp 12 OZ / 354 ML

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85

I had a leftover sample of this from David’s “Happy Commuter” sample pack way back in like, 2014. I’ve been trying to clear out my tea cupboard so I wanted to get this out of the way, but it sounds pretty good so I honestly don’t mind.

The dry leaf is very fruity and tart, lots of blueberry and currant, which is well, obvious considering the ingredients of the tea. Steeped, the tea gets that lovely deep amber color that red rooibos gets, and it keeps the fruity aroma, but the rooibos is a lot more noticeable.

Flavorwise the tea is a lot stronger in its rooibos. Blueberry is to me, the most prominent of the fruity flavors with black currant and then red currant following. Overall, I think that it lives up to its name of being a fruity rooibos rather than a fruit flavored tea with a rooibos base. I enjoy it a lot actually and think it would be great over ice but sadly David’s has discontinued this tea it looks like. I’ll savor the last sips of this cup while I can.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 4 min, 0 sec 1 tsp 8 OZ / 236 ML

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