New Tasting Notes
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
Gongfu!
Steeping up a late afternoon session and just marveling at the many, many beautiful golden flowers in this delicious dark tea. The session starts in a way that almost feels broody with heavier notes of forest undergrowth, cloves, and burnt parchment or antique books. It does brighten up a little bit, though that smokiness stays pretty consistent over most of the steeps. The big shift is in the presence of sweeter notes of ripe apples. I don’t always get this type of honeyed apple note from heicha, but when I do it’s a favourite. Overall, it’s a very complex and layered tea with a great body feeling that slowly builds up with each infusion. Dang, do I love a good fu brick! Golden flowers are just so delicious!
Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/C619ez2upoL/?img_index=1
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7yXr7L-2Ww
Gongfu!
Enjoyed this session while diving into a new manga. Since BLT just dropped their first batch of Spring pu’erh, I thought it would be a good time to revisit this past year’s pressing. This session showcased a lot of the elements that really make me love Yiwu productions. For starters, the liquor has notable body but is also very round and soft feeling. It’s also fairly sweet, with more of a fruity profile than anything else: stonefruits such as honeyed peaches and apricot but lightly tinged with a bit of citrus. Very approachable but without lacking in interesting nuances of taste and texture.
I always wonder if my tastes in raw pu’erh will shift away from what Yiwu offers, and though they’ve definitely broadened since first getting into sheng I can say with confidence that this is definitely still my favourite pu’erh producing region. I’m so excited to add another cake of BLT’S “Year of The” Zodiac series to the pumidor – it’s a Spring tea highlight of mine every year!
Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/C64dw4FOqL5/?img_index=1
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9bZzagXa20
Enjoyed a teacup of this blend this morning paired with some berry macarons!! Though I think Deb has some stronger hojicha blends, I really like the contrast of bright, jammy strawberry notes with the dark, nutty finish of the roasted green tea. The coconut is subtle, but the creamy, fatty mouthfeel it adds to the cup almost acts as a bridge connecting these two contrasting flavours. I know it’s not the intention, but this tea very much reads as a more classic PB&J sort of flavour to me and I’m very much here for the nostalgia of that!!
Tea Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/C662hSUu68k/
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5wOULIAhqo
It’s a dark and rainy day here today, so I figured it’s a perfect time to sip a smoky tea. Not sure why I think those two things go together, but I always seem to want roasty, toasty, or smoky teas when it’s rainy out. The cozy factor, I guess?
Honestly, this one is just not very interesting. I guess I expected more, since the description mentions jasmine and bergamot. There is a hint of citrus (I would guess lemon), but the jasmine is subtle to the extreme. I can smell a bit of it, but I don’t think I would notice it in the flavor at all if I wasn’t specifically searching for it.
Mostly it just tastes like a mellow smoked black tea? Perhaps with a hint of lemon. It’s good and I’ll drink it, but I was hoping for more jasmine and bergamot here. :|
Flavors: Campfire, Citrus, Earthy, Lemon, Mineral, Savory, Smoked, Smooth, Woody
Preparation
I’ve tried so hard to love this tea, but I just can’t. Been on a quest to find a replacement for an old teavana tea and ran across this. It’s just meh. I steeped a cup this morning and added some creamer in it. I recall that other tea becoming this delicious creamy mint chocolate cup, but this one was so disappointing that I dumped the cup. I’ve used it for feeding my kombucha scoby, but I’m dumping the rest of this tin. I’m tired of trying to find a good use for it and given it a first, second and fifth chance, but it’s no use.
Ooh, this is lovely! The “Balade” series are all inspired by and named after places, and so I learned “Terre Neuve” is actually the French name for Newfoundland (hence the maple).
This tea is almost like a different spin on my favorite Momijigari from Lupicia. Really nice balance of sweet and natural-tasting maple with really nice apple flavor. They call it baked apple, but to me it has more tartness and dimension than cooked apples usually do. Definitely a red apple though. There’s also a nuttiness, which to me tastes like pecan.
Really nice, happy to have 100g of it. My only critique would be the black base seems a tad bit more prone to bitterness than other black teas I have from them. But it’s just a touch, so certainly doesn’t ruin the yummy flavors. :)
Flavors: Apple, Astringent, Bitter, Maple, Maple Syrup, Nuts, Pecan, Red Apple, Roasted Nuts, Sweet, Tannic, Tart, Woody
Preparation
This is probably the best Palais des Thes I’ve had yet, but the bar is fairly low here. Big Ben is a bog standard Assam/Yunnan blend English Breakfast tea. It has a nice smooth body with malty notes and little astringency, no bitterness. If you like a proper bracing cuppa, this is not for you as it brews relatively weak, as most PdT I’ve had.
It’s a perfectly serviceable if weak English Breakfast blend, but these are everywhere and this one is not particularly outstanding. It’s a fine all around blend that tastes like many other teas of half the price. However, the overall quality is good and it’s attractively packaged in a muslin teabag, so might be good for a non-controversial tea gift.
Flavors: Malty, Smooth
Preparation
2024 sipdown no. 34
This tea is really lovely, there are hints of cinnamon coming through that I have found in other high mountain blacks as well. The body is light-medium with a sweetness that is subtle and fruit-like.
