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This was the drink that turned my admiration for DAVIDsTEA into a neurotic obsession.

I had seen the carnival collection in store when purchasing a gift for a friend, and smelled the loose tea samples they had set out. I thought they smelled cloyingly sweet, and definitely were not for me! I don’t sweeten my tea at all, and at most I might enjoy some fruit flavours in an herbal infusion, but I really don’t have a big sweet tooth and candy-flavoured tea sounded like a nightmare. No thanks!

Fast forward about a month, and I had a little games night planned with a few friends. One of my best friends, a total tea junkie, brought a pitcher of cotton candy iced tea, so of course I tried some. It completely surprised me! It isn’t nearly as sweet as I had assumed it would be, and has very soft flavours of candy and tropical fruits. It was lightly sweet and very refreshing, and struck me as a lovely drink for summer barbecues and patio parties. It tastes like pastel pink, and I don’t know if that’s just association with the colour of cotton candy or if I’m developing synaesthesia as I age, but there you have it! Baby pink tea!

The next time I was by the shop, I popped in to find that their summer collection was all on sale, and the carnival collection boxes were on special if you bought three. Obviously, I bought three of them, and then was sold on the Frequent Steepers plan, and then started browsing the web specials, and now I have a growing collection of their teas and mugs, as well as that same pitcher that my friend brought over, as she has since moved out of the country and couldn’t manage to take it with her. This was the first falling rock in the avalanche.

I brewed up another pitcher of iced cotton candy recently, and have found it a delightful take-along in a tumbler for visits to the dog park.

Sigh. I wanted to like you, really I did! You promised excitement and adventure, but it turned out that you have no personality. You’re weak and bland, and I just feel nothing for you. As tea goes, you don’t have a strong enough leaf to demonstrate any character, and as far as red velvet cake – I detect none of that sweetness. No chocolate, no cake, no creaminess. All I taste is a weak tea with some generically sweet artificial flavouring. So bummed.

Maybe I’ll try this tea again one day to find out if the stuff I got was just not a good representative, but I won’t pay for it unless it drastically changes my mind somehow.

Ahh, this was my gateway drug to DAVIDsTEA. A friend at work bought it last winter, and when she brewed it our whole office smelled like warm, chocolatey, spicy delight! She shared it with me, and once I tasted it I was hooked. This tea has a marvellous aroma! The flavour is slightly sweet, with strong notes of chocolate and chilli pepper (surprise!), and a hint of red berry underneath.

I find the top of the cup to be more chocolatey, with an aftertaste of chilli pepper that gets stronger in the mouth as you get lower into the cup. The chilli heat is quite mild – it’s not like drinking, say, ginger tea with cayenne pepper; it likes to sit in the back of the throat rather than burning around the lips and tongue.

I recently bought 100g of this tea so that I can have some at work and some at home for the cool weather to come. I’m sure I’ll need to be stocking up again before too long – Eastern Canada’s winters always feel like they’ll never end, and warming treats like this help to make it feel almost enjoyable. Almost.

Mmmm, I love this tea! This is not an every day tea for me, because it has a lot of extra personality, which I’m not always up for. But when I want it, this tea delivers! It’s got a heavenly aroma of slightly burnt caramel (it fooled the boyfriend into thinking I was baking something delicious at one point, which resulted in crushing disappointment – naughty tea!). The flavour is a lovely mouthful of toffee and black tea, with strong notes of what I keep coming back to as buttered toast, and a little hint of coconut under it all.

My only criticism here would be that I really don’t taste any salt in there. Granted, it’s immensely preferable to an overabundance of salt, I’m sure, but I do love me some salted caramel and the salt is a big player in that. However, given the butter, toast, and toffee flavours, if they called this tea “Butter Tart” instead, I would have said they nailed it. That’s a butter tart without vile little raisins in it, of course. shudder

The cider part of this tisane’s name is a misnomer. I tried a sample in the store, and was initially excited to have my first taste of cider for the impending autumn season. However, there was no cider flavour in there! Even a plain, unmulled cider has a very rich, musky, complex flavour, and this brew is clear, bright, and brassy. Totally not a cider taste. Additionally, I would expect a cider tea to have more of the mulled cider flavour, so cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, etc., none of which show up here.

In any case, it was still quite yummy. It tasted like apples right off the bat, but something else not quite identifiable. As soon as my friend said it tasted more like apple candy to her, I realised that was exactly it. This tastes like a green apple Jolly Rancher, but not as sugary sweet – it’s still very fruit sweet, though. It was a friendly little infusion, but unfortunately I don’t think it’ll be coming home with me.

Tasted a sample of this in store recently. It was warm and nice and very juicy – a definite autumn flavour. I’m not an enormous cranberry fan, so I don’t know that I would buy any for myself, but if you like that flavour it would definitely be a good treat. I would certainly take a cup if offered it somewhere.

I decided to brew this up on a Sunday night and bring it on the train with me in the morning as a cold treat. I generally prefer a hot drink in the morning, but time is tough when you’re racing to get ready, and Monday mornings are particularly hectic – not only am I dealing with all the regular morning activities, but it’s trash/recycling/compost collection day, so there’s always an added bit of madness, which the (enormous) puppy thinks is great fun. Suffice to say, there isn’t always time to even boil the kettle, so forget steeping or doing anything fancy!

I forgot I had set this to steep in a small pot (oops!), so definitely overcooked it or whatever the tea connoisseurs call it. Still, I don’t mind bitter tea, so I poured it in my little iced tea travel sippy cup and left it to chill overnight in the fridge. I found this to be a very refreshing morning tea. The sarsaparilla has a strong zing to it, and the spice notes are slightly warming in the back of the throat. I was really pleased I’d tried it out, because I was pretty sceptical about a root beer float tea. I’m not sure how often I’ll use this one, especially given that the warm weather is winding down and the general consensus here says that this isn’t a great tea served hot, but I’m still happy with it, and would recommend it, if even just for a bit of a novelty.

Had this as an iced tea from the shop last week when it was hot out, and it was, indeed, very refreshing! It was a little on the bitter side. I found it difficult to identify any specific kind of melon flavour; the mint was definitely the top note. It made me taste cucumber, but I’m not sure if that was just memory association, since I’ve often had mint and cucumber infused water in the past. I’m not the biggest mint fan, so I didn’t completely fall in love, but it was nice for a steamy late summer day.

Not much to add to this that hasn’t been amply well-covered by previous reviewers. This is a lovely, fruity, slightly spicy, warming tea. If you add whitener, it goes a tremendous pink colour, which is kind of awesome. Thanks, beet root!

I got a tiramisu blend set from David’s a little while ago, achieved by mixing equal parts Coffee Pu’erh and Birthday Cake Rooibos. I’m not sure how it compares to the actual tiramisu flavoured tea, but it was delightfully creamy with lots of coffee and vanilla flavour, and somehow a hint of chocolate – in all, a pretty decent approximation of tiramisu. If you missed out on Tiramisu Rooibos, both of the other teas are currently available in shop