North Star

Sipdown/Backlog

I quite liked this one. What sold this for me was the addition of spinach; I thought that it was an odd addition to a blend, but it drove me to grab some. I think the time spent sitting in the bag/sipdown pile for the past year (or longer?), helped bring the lemongrass and orange forward! I was a bit surprised to not find white chocolate in the blend, but I noted that flavor a few times on my scrap paper.

Day 9 of the DavidsTea herbal advent calendar and possibly my favorite so far! Credit for the follow-through on the theme: these white star-shaped sprinkles are darling. The orange peel and mint are the true stars of this blend though. The creamy orange mint flavor here is so soothing. It’s gentle and comforting. I had the first few cups during work, which I sort of regret, because this is a great wintry evening cuppa. And cue the tears, because I can’t even find it on their website to order more if I decide to! If anyone has extra and is interested in a swap, let me know – taking a quick look at the other reviews, I seem to be mostly an outlier in how much I enjoyed this!

I got this blend back in July or August when all of their holiday products were on clearance because I liked the nordic mugs and I wanted to have a few seasonal blends on hand for this year. Turns out, I never checked the ingredients… This blend is full of sugar and sweeteners. Big oops! I usually don’t mind sprinkles in my tea but this blend is overkill. There are sprinkles, candied fruit, candies, and brittle in this herbal blend, so much so that I can’t taste the herbs! It may be just a me thing but this blend also had the nail polish remover/ alcohol taste that the Witches Brew had. I was so disappointed because I loved the scent of this blend but it’s just sickeningly sweet, for my own tastes, and for my PCOS this blend won’t be staying in my collection, I just have to find a home for it I’d hate to just throw it away.

The flavor here is light and orangey with a finish of mint. It all goes together pretty well! I’m enjoying it cold. The orange is definitely closer to a fake orange juice flavor than anything natural, but it fits well in this blend. I don’t think I’d order it again as it’s all quite artificial, but I’ll enjoy my bag.

After singing the praises of the dark chocolate orange, I was excited for more orange with my tea. This really wasn’t for me, unfortunately.

The first cup was such a strong orange peel flavor I kept thinking of cleaning solution. The second cup didn’t have that problem, which is always interesting; it makes me wonder if the particular spoonful I got was just a bad mix or if something was weird with my own tongue. But the second cup wasn’t really good either; I don’t know if I was put off by the mint/orange combo (which sounded awesome!) or the sweet factor.

I like that it was included, since it’s something fun and truly different from what I’ve had before, but I think that’s the end of the road for me and this tea.

DAVIDsTEA advent, day 6
DAVIDsTEA caffeine free advent, day 9

DAVIDsTEA Advent Calendar 2021 – Day 6

Ooh, what a gorgeous tisane! Love the star sprinkles. Even though I don’t generally like chocolate and crap in my tea, I’m still a sucker for sprinkles… shrugs

This is an interesting one. The main flavors are orange, cream/vanilla, and spearmint, but there’s a lot of other random bits – like spinach and moringa? Very odd. I don’t really taste them though. I actually quite like the orange and mint together, a flavor combination that I feel I’ve rarely seen.

However. The first ingredient in the list is sugar. Which of course, completely ruins the whole thing for me because it’s just overpoweringly sweet. I suppose I should be happy that it’s not stevia, but it’s undrinkable for me either way.

A pity, I was jiving with the orange and spearmint pairing. I’ll have to keep an eye out for that…

Also, the steeped tea smells repulsive for some reason. Carry on.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CXKMrkiA4oK/

Cold Brew Sipdown (1543)!

So I have tried this tea a ton of different ways now and not just as a cold brew but I did take exactly a cold brew’s worth of the tea home from work on the day it launched so that I could steep it that way since it was the last method on my list. So, I suppose this is a cold brew sipdown even though it’ll be a note about the tea in general…

There’s kind of a lot going on in this blend – it’s got the cute white star sprinkles that I suppose (combined with the name) are meant to make you think of, like, the North Pole? And the mint is one of those sort of ubiquitous “wintery” flavours because of the chilling/frost sort of aspects. However, then you also have orange and… spinach!? Yes, there is spinach in the blend. Why? Well, it adds a really nice lush green colour to the dry leaf visual of the tea. That’s sort of the primary reason which, truthfully, I find a little silly. Aside from that it does help offset some of the overall sweetness in the cup – which I guess is beneficial.

Orange and mint is always a weird sounding combination on paper. Makes me think of drinking orange juice after brushing your teeth. However, the taste doesn’t make me think of that at all and it’s honestly not so weird. I’d say it’s close to an even split between sweet orange and cooling peppermint, but perhaps just a little bit more orange and then a lot of emphasis on the menthol/crispness of the mint in the finish in particular. Especially when you drink this tea cold.

If I had to make a comparison, I’d say it reminds me a fair amount of Midsummer Night’s Dream but peppermint instead of spearmint and a little more mint/less tang that Midsummer Night’s Dream. You could maybe think of this as a wintery version of that tea. Maybe.

I feel like I’m not ‘selling’ it very well, but it’s important to me personally to make sure it’s clear that I do actually like this tea! It’s not overly rich but it’s also not weak and I thought it was a REALLY refreshing cold brew/iced tea. A good break up from all the spice/chocolate blends of the season. I have a lot of orange teas though, and when it comes to citrus/mint combinations my weak spot is for lemon/mint. I dig this though – I’ll likely not grab more for at home but I’ll likely take advantage of having it accessible at work.

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.

(DavidsTea 194)

Certainly could have done with a 10g sample of this… it smells interesting – a bit citrussy, creamy, minty… but there’s too much mint for me, and it’s probably not a latte candidate because of the citrus. Definitely wanted to like this much more than I do.