69 Tasting Notes
Used up 4 precious tsp of this amazing stuff to brew two cups of iced tea for my brother and myself. Thinking back, I’m preeeetty sure that should’ve been 8 tsp. Yeah… but anyway…
I simmered up some medium simple syrup and put a bit over ice, then iced up my Goji Pop and HOLY MOTHER is it ever delicious iced… I may have to go and get another like 200g of this to get me through summer.
Seriously, David’s Tea. I’m not dicking around now.
This tea neeeeeeds to be in the core line-up.
Like, for serious.
Tomorrow — you know, the first day of spring? — we’re expecting 10-15cm of snow. SNOW. Seriously. How will you expect me to make it through my Winnipeg winters unless I have access to a non-stop Goji Pop party town stash? You can’t.
And to withdraw my access is inhumane.
You don’t want to be inhumane, do you?
PS: Next time I’m mixing it with lemonade. Yeah. That’s right. Goji Pop Lemonade. While you’re reeling from how awesome that sounds, just switch it on over to a core tea, available year round.
PPS: Seriously. I’m having apoplexy here.
Preparation
I’ve already established that I quite enjoy Pink Flamingo, but I’ve never tried a David’s Tea tea iced (outside my iced spearmint tea actually FROM David’s Tea.)
Gotta say, I’m going to be resorting to iced tea a lot more frequently this summer!
Quite a treat.
I’m going to whip up a batch of simple syrup though, because cold things need to be sweet.
Yum!
Preparation
I got a little bag of this in an effort to expand my non-flavoured tea selection. I want to find a Really Good Black (and David’s Breakfast Organic isn’t it. Toooo floral.) or two and a Really Good Green (which will probably be a Chinese green, because I love the way they taste.)
Milk and sugar because it’s orange pekoe, and that’s how I usually take it, so this’ll draw the best comparason.
I’ll be honest, I didn’t really measure because I still don’t know how much water my teapot holds. (Because I’m lazy.) So it looks a TOUCH weak…
Smells good, though. And TASTES lovely.
My go-to orange pekoe (okay, go-to TEA altogether) is Red Rose, but I can see this replacing it quite easily.
Drinkable and smooth, no bitterness… I’ll experiment, of course, but I believe I’ve found my Really Good Black!
Preparation
All right, then.
I accidentally tried Cocomama Lime naked this afternoon and enjoyed it SO MUCH MORE than when I had it with honey in it.
Is this the trick? Not to put anything in your teas to get the full enjoyment out of it?
Silly me. Let’s hope so.
Unfortunately, my little girl decided that she was not having a nap this afternoon, so not only did I not get to submit a tasting note for my Cocomama Lime experience, I also did not get to drink more than a couple sips before it was time to colour and rock out to the Galaxy Party music station and play in puddles.
All things equal, I’d rather play than drink tea.
But this tea is going to be enjoyed.
Now, it SMELLS great of course, but I have serious, serious sense memory, so I could just be imagining the taste with milk and sugar. I disappointingly don’t see the usual skiff of chocolate-based oil on the top of my cup of tea either, but whatever. I’m not here to be visually entertained, I’m here to have my tastebuds knocked out of my mouth.
I have the feeling that going milk-free will really bring out the spiciness.
And it does.
It’s almost like it just keeps being hot in parts of my mouth after the rest of it has cooled down from the heat of my tea. It’s really interesting. Like putting your hand on that machine that alternates hot and cold coils that they have at science museums. I like it!
Okay, after letting it sit for a little bit, I’m happier with it. My initial reaction was, “It isn’t sweet AT ALL!” followed by a sad-face. But once the heat of the chili wears off, it’s plenty chocolatey and plenty sweet.
I’m pretty sure I need to GET OVER my sugar addiction…
The only real disappointing thing about this tea is its body. It’s akin to water, and I like a little more substance to my teas. But seriously? I can get over that.
Preparation
I’ve got a rather expensive wager with my sister in law going on.
We’re both trying to lose 20lbs by summer.
Loser pays for a hotel room in Grand Forks for a shopping trip. (And if we both lose the weight, nobody pays because we’ll be so busy having slamming beach parties.)
So I’m trying to reduce my intake of sweets, and that includes dessert teas.
Hello, Japanese Sencha.
On to the tasting.
I’m pretty sure I didn’t put enough tea in (okay, yes, I eyeballed it) because it doesn’t have much of a scent. Not the heady, lush amazingness I loved the first time. How sad.
Upon tasting, I’m convinced that I’ve brewed this tragically wrong. I should find out the dimensions of my little teapot so that I don’t make this mistake in the future. Very disappointing, especially considering the tiny amout of this tea that I have available (it came in a World Tour box.)
On a more serious note, the Shizuoka prefecture — where this tea is harvested — was where the 6.0 aftershock took place (yesterday, was it?) So good vibes and thoughts to the people living in the area as well as the rest of Japan.
AGAIN, with the over-indulging.
I made cake balls for my mother-in-law’s birthday. French vanilla cake, french vanilla icing, dipped in milk chocolate. They were delicious.
A little too delicious…
So The Skinny it is today.
The body of this tea always surprises me. I’m used to ginger teas being thin and sharp, but this has the creamiest body outside of a rooibos. I’m not used to oolong teas, so maybe that’s a feature of oolongs as well.
The last time I tried this tea I really enjoyed it, but wound up having stomach ache about an hour after. I hope that doesn’t happen again, because I plan on drinking quite a bit of this tea over the next month.
The gingeriness is pretty much all I can pick out, but it feels like it’s slicing through my mouth and stomach (in a good way) to release all of the badness I’ve been shoving into my body over the last weeks.
The smell is scary, like Detox. The taste is a LITTLE scary too, but too scary. I think it’s the addition of the “organic ginger flavouring.” Or, that’s what I’d guess.
I’m not all “Let’s drink THE SKINNY!” when it comes to this tea, but when I need a bit of a gluttonous time-out, this is a good one.
Preparation
Man, oh, man it’s killing me to drink this.
I put my name in at the David’s Tea here in Winnipeg (Polo Park, WOO!), and haven’t heard back. So I may be drinking a precious, non-renewable resource!
I’ll be honest, I really only wanted to see how this spectacular pink tea looked in my white teacup, but it’s not like it’s a tea I don’t ADORE, so there’s no real hardship.
Yet.
If I don’t get my “We have Goji Pop in, come and buy 150g straightaway!” phone call, then I’ll be pretty ripped up about it.
To the tea: satisfying as ever. I can smell the bubblegum tuti-fruity aroma wafting towards me from my big white cup. I kind of want to chug it, but — not knowing if I’ll get any more — I think I’ll savour instead.
Mmm… today it smells like a pink lady celebration cake.
And the sweet, sweet taste is divine!
Please call me back, David’s Tea…
Preparation
Brewing this in my brand new tea-for-one teapot and cup. Funny story: I went looking for teapots because I’m having a fancy tea party in the next couple weeks with two girlfriends and their daughters and we’re going to plan our elaborate vegetable and flower gardens and drink tea and eat little treats (little cucumber sandwiches, little scones, little cakey cookies.) The only “teapot” they had was this two-piece tea-for-one pot, down to $3.99. Well, it’s not what I was looking for, but the price was sure right, so I picked it up and put it in my basket. When I got to the check-out, it rang up at $7.99, so I questioned it. (I HATED being “that girl.” What am I, eighty? I apologized quite a few times to the people behind me and to the check-out boy.) The girl came back with the sign that indicated that I was right and she proceeded to tell the check-out boy how to put it through, and then she said something really awesome. “And then she gets it for free becaues the price was wrong.” Say WHAT?? FREE TEAPOT? Damn, I’m a lucky girl!
So I’m brewing this alarmingly pink, deliciously citrusy tea in my BRAND NEW FREE TEAPOT and enjoying it in the ridiculously large-mouthed rapid-heat-loss cappuccino mug that comes with it.
First of all, I can’t get enough of the colour of this tea. And that fresh orange scent blows my mind. I’m used to the Wild Sweet Orange orange from Tazo. (About as orangey to orange as NeoCitran is lemony to lemon. IE: not.)
The hibiscus is a little zingy (yuck), but the pinkness of the tea is just so excellent that I’m not too concerned.
I want to be drinking this in the sun, under the shade of a well-plant-covered pergola, listening to summer birds like robins chirping while reading my trashy Charlaine Harris novels, watching my daughter play in the mud.
But working in my dining room at my laptop while wearing slippers will have to do…
For now.
Preparation
Now, with David’s teas specifically, I have had very little luck with white teas. But this came in the world tour box that I got for Christmas, so I figured I’d give it a whirl.
Trying this one naked, since it’s got so many sweet things in it already (blueberries, pomegranate, flowers… That last one may be the death knell, though, since it’s the floral nature of all of the white teas that I’ve tried that has turned me off.) A darker steep than I expected from a white tea to be sure, and that pomegranate comes out swinging! This smells like it could be an unexpected treat (like many of the ones in the world tour box that I didn’t expect to like at all.)
Nope.
Nope, it’s still a white.
I don’t know what it is about them that I just don’t like! I mean, it’s okay and I’ll finish this cup, but white teas are just not my bag.
So it’s a good thing that A) this was a gift and B) I don’t have very much of it! ;)
I can’t really get much in the way of taste out of it, it doesn’t have much of a smell, and there’s a strange combination of juciness and dryness in the aftertaste that I just don’t care for.
Le sad.
Maybe I’ll have FOUR cups of tea today so that I can end my tea day on an awesome high.
(Although, PS, my mum gave me her space-foam mattress topper and I snuck it home and on the bed before my husband got home from his evening shift. I’ve been campaigning for one of those for A G E S, because our bed is crappy and when my husband even THINKS, I go pitching around like a small paper boat in rough seas. I mean, the bowling ball mattress it ain’t, but it is niiiiice and cushy. I’m wondering how long it’ll take him to figure it out, but I’m pretty sure it’ll be right when he comes home and asks me how my day was and I burst into peals of giggling. I have no poker face. Long story short, THAT should end my day on a high regardless, so I may succumb to my abject laziness and not brew another cup of tea after all that.)