New Tasting Notes
So I have to admit, I can’t help but compare this to Premium Taiwanese Assam from Whispering Pines. They have too much similarity. However, this just doesn’t really measure up. Don’t get me wrong, its not bad at all, but it is lacking is comparison.
Dry leaf smell really reminds me of buttered bread. The scent of the wet leaf almost gives me the impression of burnt sugar. That’s not a great description, but its the best I can come up with right now. Its like its something I know, but I just can’t make the correct connection.
As for flavor its not bad. There’s a little dryness or astringency, but is slight and really only noticeable as it cools. There’s a little sweetness, mostly in the back of the sip and aftertaste.
I’m really struggling to describe the flavor. Its like I can feel there is something it reminds me of but I am struggling to make that connection.
Will have to try again soon and see if it comes to me another day. Maybe I am just trying too hard today.
Resteeps pretty well. By the fifth steep however, the dryness stands out a lot more than it did the first three.
friend (well, sister-in-law) gifted me this tea bag, as she knows I adore berry teas
once upon a time, this was my favorite tea, but now it brings me back to a bad relationship
it’s hard to drink, however, I can’t let him take this away from me
so, here’s to linking this tea to new memories!
This was a Mother’s Day gift from Superanna. Many thanks for a new “must have” tea!
On Sunday, I noticed the cherry first and there was an undercurrent of berry with a candy-like note to the berry flavor that I couldn’t pin down. I think it was the raspberry! It was so good I ordered more last night because it is a seasonal tea and I don’t to spend almost a year without it!
I made it again today to see if it was really as magical as we thought or was it the moment?
Today the salted cherry leaf was more noticeable than before, maybe because this time I know it is there and looked for it. But really, it was more prominent and it gives the tea real presence so you can drink it at breakfast even though both Nilgiri and Darjeeling are lighter black teas. This might even be Sakura Premium with flavors added.
Very good, and will probably be gone long before it comes available again.
Ashmanra’s sipdown challenge – May 2024 Tea #2 – Your tea closest to sipdown
This one was closest to a sipdown… because I just sipped it down. :D What looks like a small amount of leaves sure unravels A LOT. This was an okay tea, but I expected more aromatic, if it’s in the name. And the flavor really wasn’t very strong for the infuser basket being half full of leaves. I have liked other snails more than this one. But this certainly has the characteristics and flavor of keemun…. but very very light keemun.
2024 sipdowns: 38
A very typical genmai cha, with a grassy (if rather weak) standard quality green and puffed brown rice imparting a popcorn-like note. This tastes like a generic grocery store genmaicha and I just had to laugh when I saw it was $16 for 20 bags. That is ludicrous and you would have to be utterly barmy to pay that. Go to an Asian supermaket and get the Yamamoto Yama Genmaicha for a better tea at less than a quarter of the price. You’d even do better with the mass-market Itoen 500g bag for less than this.
Flavors: Grassy, Popcorn, Roasty, Vegetal
Preparation
It’s good but it’s certainly nothing that I haven’t tasted before.
It’s giving me Forever Nuts by DAVIDsTea vibes.
The flavours taste exactly as the listed ingredients, apple, cinnamon and hibiscus.
I don’t understand why they called it Almond Cookie though. There are no nuts in the mix at all (although I can imagine it) but the cookie part is non-existent and totally reaching.
I’ll have no trouble getting through my box but I wouldn’t purchase again.
Flavors: Apple, Cinnamon, Hibiscus, Smooth, Sweet, Tart
From my very first Amoda box. I wasn’t really looking for a new tea subscription, but a couple of TeaTubers I follow had codes for 40% off your first box, so I figured I would give it a try!
This one sounded good, with the coffee combined with cocoa and almond, but really all I’m tasting is the black tea and the coffee/chicory. Maybe a little bit of extra earthiness from the puerh. I feel like it really needs those sweeter flavors to make it interesting and balance out the toasty and acidic notes. As-is, it’s sort of just watered down coffee ha ha.
Flavors: Acidic, Chicory, Coffee, Earthy, Roasted, Watery, Woody
Preparation
For this large mug of tea I used one of these bigger sized pearls and a few pieces of the cinnamon bark. It took a little while for the pearl to open up so I worried that maybe I’d over brewed the cup, but it was pretty perfect! Very full bodied and brisk black tea base but also really rich and malty with some nice chocolate-y undertones. The yunnan pearls Anne uses are quite decadent on their own, but layered with this rich cinnamon note and the syrupy maple flavours the blend is spot on for its namesake. Just highly, highly enjoyable.
Made this at work today since I was largely just in the mood for simple, “pure play” type flavoured blends. This one is smooth and just a little cozy with a pretty non-complex baked apple flavour. It’s the kind of tea where my impression could pretty drastically very from day to day depending on what kind of mood I’m in – but today I really leaned into the softer flavours and directness of the tea.
Made this one over the weekend in the morning because I was craving that “Just Peachy” style of bright, juicy and slightly tangy Fuzzy Peach-like fruit note, but I also definitely needed a little caffeine and that bit of added focus from the green mate base. The subtle twist of ripe strawberry was also nice, though this is absolutely a peach forward 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.
Iced Latte!
We were making matcha infused whipped cream at work today over lunch, and one of the flavours we made was banana. So, of course, I couldn’t turn down the oppertunity to have an iced banana matcha (happy Matcha Monday!) topped with banana matcha whipped cream. It was so good! Very, very rich but also quite fresh since the whipped cream was practically unsweetened save for the small amount of cane sugar in this semi sweetened matcha formulation – so that added an interesting twist. Kind of banana cream pie vibes overall.
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.
I feel like this past weekend I must have subconsciously been craving fruitier blends with a really specific sort of vibe to them because, even though the flavours are all different, I find that stylistically this tea is REALLY SIMILAR to Sleepy Lychee – which is another tea I had on the same day. Very fruity but light and maybe even a little floral with that sort of lush, dewy tasting note (in this case from melon and mango) with a cooling quality. Thankfully, unlike Sleepy Lychee, I have a very large stash of 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.
Cold Brew!
So juicy, fresh and lush tasting! This might just be my favourite lychee tea from DAVIDsTEA, though Lychee Bellini gives it a run for its money too – though that is a very sweet blend. I timed out this cold brew so it would be ready to strain in the evening and it ended up being a nice wind down/cool down tea for me over the weekend.
I need to remember to grab some of this from the office to top off my tin before we run out – it’s unfortunately a discontinued blend and I think the work stash is dwindling fairly quickly…
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.
Sipdown
This grape candy goodness is a definite reorder. It just tastes fun, fruity, and festive and once I get rid of some things that I don’t plan to keep on shelf on a regular basis, I will be getting more. Happily this is available year ‘round and isn’t a seasonal tea.
I mixed two single serve packets of this matcha into about 20oz of lemonade to create a very intense but delicious blueberry matcha lemonade. You could really taste all three flavours quite distinctly, and it made for a nicely balanced trio of sweet, umai, and tart flavours. Would definitely make this again – though I’d love to try the same idea with strawberry matcha as well.
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.
Sipdown (2607)!
I was fully braced for an unpleasantly earthy and spicy soup-like cuppa, but honestly this was a lot more approachable than I’d have expected given the ingredient list. Very soothing still, but more medium bodied/intensity with quite clean tasting turmeric, ginger, and burdock – no muddy earthiness. I thought the heat were noticeable, but gentle enough to work for something less fond of these ingredients like myself. Not too savory or brothy at all.
Usuallly I’m also quite sensitive to the taste of licorice root, but I found it very balanced here and that lingering sweetness in the aftertaste really softened the spices and roots. Would I reach for this again? Nope, but I’m had many much worse turmeric and ginger bagged teas.
Cold Brew Sipdown (2608)!
Decided to make this as a cold brew because it sounded nice and simple and very refreshing. I will say, it is super refreshing with a very fresh, grassy leaning profile and even notes of bamboo as well. However, it’s supposed to have a citrus oil in it and I’m not tasting anything citrusy at all. Basically, this is just a very smooth and pleasant plain green tea profile. That said, I guess it’s impressive how approachable it is for someone like me who usually doesn’t mesh with straight green teas.
Not really sure how to rank this – I mean there’s one ingredient in this blend other than green tea and it’s just totally absent so that feels like a miss. But the green tea itself is very smooth, and really delicious. Idk.
Drank this yesterday and sorta struggled with the mug? I really wanted to like this blend, but something about it just felt off to me. I guess, to start, I expected a muffin inspired blend to either be more buttery or just have more of a baked good note in general and I felt like that was missing for me.
But that’s not really what was off to me. I think the whole mug just seemed rather heavy? Like, the blueberry note was the strongest thing in the cup but it was simultaneously very floral leaning in a heady sort of way, and also more of a cooked blueberry note (which makes sense for the concept) versus something fresh – and that combo of deep florals and dense fruits felt very… I don’t know? The thing that comes to mind is that is made the cup seem weighted in an unbalanced way. Like everything was being yanked down?? It doesn’t help that the green base had a little bit of a bitter and medicinal edge.
I did taste caramel and vanilla though, and both were pleasant with the blueberry. Still didn’t do anything to brighten/lighten up the cup though, or offset the harsher elements of the base….
Though I usually tend to pick out mugs that loosely match the vibe of the tea I’m drinking, lately I’ve kind of been doing the reverse? AKA picking out a mug first and then finding a tea that goes with it. In this case, I started with a mug covered in cherry print and then went searching for the first cherry tea I could find.
This tea is really, really growing on me. I think what I love so much is that it’s a very distinctly red, ripe cherry note but it’s so soft feeling – almost in a way that makes me think of powdered sugar? I’m so used to that red cherry note being accompanied by so much hibiscus. And, yes, there IS hibiscus in this blend but it’s a very restrained amount. Plus, there’s a subtle creaminess here that just sort of weaves throughout the mug in a nice, silky sorta way.
I doubt I’ll be order from Trader Nick’s any time soon since I just placed a MASSIVE order, but this would definitely be on a reorder list in the future!
Last of the Lao Kombucha flavours I was gifted that I needed to finish off.
I thought I had tried this one before, but looks like that’s not the case. Or, possibly, I have but I never logged it here. Nonetheless, I didn’t really love this one but I also didn’t expect to. Though I appreciated the tang of the kombucha vinegar and it’s subtle apple-y notes, overall this was just waaaayyy too much ginger for me and the earthiness with the acidity wasn’t something that I immediately gelled with. I’d much prefer to just drink a ginger ale or a ginger beer.
Gongfu!
I wasn’t sure what to expect going into this tea, but I found the mouthfeel surprisingly quite soft with early steeps leaning a little sweeter and made up of tasting notes that made me think of peach or apricot flavoured cotton candy. The undertones are a little more vegetal and this becomes most apparent in the edamame-heavy finishing notes, which also had a lightly metallic tasting mineral note. As the session progressed, the flavours seemed to shift until this was more veg than sweet spun sugar – though the mouthfeel stayed a consistent, satin-like texture throughout. Though maybe a little too vegetal for my own tastes, I did feel like this was a very gentle way to ease into the day and the tea overall was quite approachable feeling. I would be soooo curious to hear from anyone else who has tried this sheng though, since my experience with this session feels pretty at odds with how W2T describes the tea…
Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/C61OOH7O75V/?img_index=1
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xz3-AvEoSPw
