13978 Tasting Notes
Sipped on this one at the office on Monday.
Even though my sample is older and a bit beat up, the tea is still so great tasting. Highly aromatic and sweet with a lot of fresh and borderline “dewy” jasmine notes mixed with the crisp, and sweetly vegetal notes of sugar snap or snow peas right out of the garden (which obviously come from the white tea itself). Reminds me a lot, actually, of the peaceful kind of sweet earth smell of standing in a vegetable and flower garden on a cooler late Spring morning after a light rainfall.
Sipped on this one at the office today. Just a real simple, brisk and straight forward cup of black tea – has that sort of “typical black tea” taste that a lot of less experienced tea drinkers just default associate with things like Orange Pekoe or breakfast blends. Really, really clean finish. Not a ton of flavour, all things considered, but great body and just the right amount of astringency. Perhaps a little nutty, and a bit of a lemon rind/pith situation – but subtle.
Flavors: Walnut
Chugged one of these fuckers on my metro ride home today. Not particularly a favourite, but I was soooo thirsty and that quick hit of sweet mellow cherry was instantly refreshing. It’s weird – there are a lot of other flavours from Peace Tea that I generally like more than this one but when I was picking something out from the dep in the station this was the only one that sounded appealing tonight.
Cold Brew!
Just let this one brew in our hotel room in a water bottle so that, when we got back from the festival and dinner on Saturday night, I’d have something ready to drink. I got mad as I was drinking it though. Not because it didn’t taste good – it did taste really good. Probably the most saturated flavour I’ve gotten from any of the T2 cold brews so far. Strong notes of strawberry… and watermelon.
It was the watermelon that pissed me off. It was so sweet and delicious, but it felt so painfully out of place for what was supposed to be a Strawberry Margarita. It made me upset because I was really looking forward to a bright, juicy strawberry note with that bright and refreshing note of lime that, like, makes a margarita a margarita. There was NO lime here at all, and the absence in combination with the name was just so, so disappointing to me. Totally an inaccurate name – and what’s wrong with just calling this what it is!? A strawberry melon tea. That’s also delicious and would have properly set up my expectations…
Shoved a couple of these in my luggage because I thought I might end up appreciating having easy/travel friendly tea bags that packed a caffeine punch. I only ended up drinking this one, during Sunday morning breakfast with a handful of tea blogger/content creator friends from instagram – it was actually so great! The tea ended up being the punch of caffeine I needed for the morning, and the flavour itself wasn’t too bad. Definitely tasted much more like passionfruit than any type of citrus. I think the strangest thing is that it’s a sweet tropical note but it doesn’t have any of the acidity that I would normally associate with passionfruit. In that way, it reminded me a bit of DT’s Green Passionfruit blend – though I think I maybe liked this better because of the black base versus the green base.
Gongfu!
This morning’s session. There weren’t a lot of teas that I knew I would be purchasing in advance of attending the festival – I was mostly interested in just sampling and seeing what stood out to me! However, this is the exception; as soon as I saw Soocha Tea would be a vendor I was eager to finally get my hands on this unique fusion of Korean tea and yuzu! It lives up to the anticipation; from the first steep this flavours are intensely rich with deep notes of bittersweet cocoa mixing in such a balanced way with the peppery and zesty bright yuzu rinds. It’s highly dynamic, joyously playful yet still elevated and nuanced. Truthfully, I almost missed leaving my apartment on time this morning because I was so immediately engrossed in the tea. If anything, I regret not getting more in person when I had the chance – it’s that stellar!
Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/CoGFNlnu8Uh/
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poyUSM5BGLE
I picked up a new matcha bowl during the festival, so I took it for a spin on Monday with this straight matcha sample I’d kind of forgotten about. I loved the bowl and the matcha was actually great! It’s an incredibly fresh, creamy and light tasting matcha with a full bouquet of aromatic floral and crisp vegetal notes!
Tea Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/CoDCZunuSUL/
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzJPyZ9et-A
It’s been a few days now since Toronto Tea Festival, and it was honestly just such an amazing experience – and so needed right now!
I did a reaaalllyyyyy shitty job keeping track of everything I sampled over the two days of the festival, so I’m just gonna write tasting notes for anything I drank a “full glass” of during the weekend break – and that starts with this iced tea that I grabbed from Eataly for breakfast on Saturday after Marika and I had just landed in Toronto and gotten out of the airport.
I’m pretty sure the drink was just made from a syrup and it was very sweet but after a very exhausting morning in the airport and on the plane (even if it was a short trip) it really hit the spot! Mostly hibiscus but the peach came through a bit in the finish.
I had a very, very stressful afternoon today so I turned to a mug of this tea as a source of comfort and grounding. The deep, full bodied and smooth notes of sweet potatoes and semi-sweet chocolate were exactly what I needed to get over some building up anxiety and get in a better mental place. I’ll be on a plane in less than twelve hours, heading to Toronto Tea Festival, and I’m really looking forward to it. Some community is exactly what I need right now!
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.
Gongfu!
Started my morning with a grounding session of fresh figs and Yiwu sheng. Definitely subtle sweetness was a huge element of this tea session both from the pu’erh itself and from the fruit. Usually I would opt to pair figs with something like a white tea, but the initially soft liquor that slowly crescendos into something more impactful with each steep worked really, really well!
Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cn7xO7PuUkD/
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXg1QK7M9Ak
