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This tea is a favourite already, and I’ve only just had my first cup.

This week has been the week from hell. I couldn’t say what exactly is bothering me so much – could be having to fight my own demons and those of a good friend of mine at the same time, could be feeling stuck, could be dealing with morons I want to strangle. Whatever the reason, I’m constantly exhausted and incredibly irritable. But I went for coffee with my dad today, and he brought me the package from David’s I got in the mail.

David’s Tea, you are clearly sent by God to keep me from going on a rampage.

Today was another slow day at work and by around one, I started to get sluggish. ‘Only four more hours’ to go, I chanted. But it didn’t feel like four. It felt like a thousand. I was feeling hopeless when I realized this little package of honey bee came in my box today.

Just opening it was a joy. The smell is both sweet and a bit tart, and definitely gets your attention. I steeped myself a quick cup and already, I feel slightly less likely to punt a puppy. It has an almost vanilla-esque smell. It’s sweet without being sickly sweet. I definitely get strong honeybush, but it isn’t overpowering. Just a nice, invigorating mate. Perfect.

Got this excellent little tea from Aimee a little while ago, back when I wasn’t sure if it would be making a return this year. I finally opened it up today while reeling in the post-literature haze of a perfect book series(they got me invested in the amazing characters, killed them all in the most tragic ways, and left the one I hated from the start and the one I grew to hate because he was a traitor even though I sympathized with him alive at the end. Why? Why would you do this to my heart?) and it was perfect. It’s got some sort of chocolatey notes, strong peppermint but not overpowering and a gorgeous smell. It does taste a bit plain compared to some of the more complex teas I’ve had, but to its credit, it’s a very simple, brainless tea that needs no sweetening.

That said, it’s a bit unpleasant cold.

Iced, I imagine this tea really is perfect. I feel like drinking it hot and giving it a bad review is unfair, so I’m not going to. I’m going to hang on to it until I can have it iced, because it has all the qualities of a great iced tea for me.

Except the ice.

I had a sample of this one in the store and it was amazing. I knew I had to pick some up. It’s not a BAD tea, but it’s not the best. It’s a good novice tea drinker tea, I think, because on the flat of your tongue it’s a pretty simple pumpkin spice-y fall drink, a little bit sweet, relatively creamy and nice going down, along with a rather nice aftertaste.

If you pay enough attention to the flavours, however, you’re going to get something pretty hard and bitter. On the sides of the tongue it tastes a bit like that one time you crunched on a chunk of cinnamon, thinking it was going to be sweet and cinnamony rather than being about as painful as crunching on pepper. That taste fades with a bit of time but it’s pretty disrupting of the experience of the rest of the tea. It’s rather like a great song with a music video from the Twilight movies. Just don’t pay attention too much and it won’t be ruined for you.

Ugh, what a long few days. Between going in to the city, looking at apartments, scaring people with my Halloween makeup and all the while working nearly full time, I’ve been pretty wiped. No end in sight just yet, but soon. Moving tomorrow after work, so yay for more work and more stress, but I’ll be glad to be in my new place, even if it means sleeping on the floor a while.

Anyhow, I brought a bunch of my new teas in to work with me to try while I work, and of course I forgot my filters. So I tore up a coffee filter and tied it around the tea to steep it. It’ll do for now.

This tea is fantastic, and I wish I’d gotten more while I was there because I love it so much. No worries though – I’m going back for the winter collection soon so I’ll pick more up then. It’s definitely orange juice-y, naturally sweet, a bit nutty to me at the end of the sip. Really light nut, though, like a hint of cashew. It’s nice warm, but I think I almost prefer it cold. If I had this with me all the time, I don’t think I’d drink coffee again.

I grabbed this one yesterday on my first foray to Teavana. The smell was absolutely perfect, and I adore amaretto, so I knew I had to take it home with me. Between this and the caramel amaretto, this one seemed much more interesting.

Turns out, as much as I love amaretto, I do not like current and hibiscus in my tea. Much too tart for me, overpowering the amaretto and leaving me like that one time when I was young and ate a bunch of sour currants. I thought I was going to die. The smell was perfect, but the taste of tangy fruits and berries was way too strong and I lost the warm, rich flavour I’d been expecting.

I imagine it’d make a nice cold tea, so I think I’ll hang on to it and try a few more times to make it work, but at this point I wouldn’t buy it again.

I went in to the city on my day off yesterday to go to David’s Tea. I was hoping they’d have their fall stuff on in the 2 for $5 bags, but not yet. Apparently that’s today. Cue kicking myself in the butt. But I picked up 100g of Mom’s Apple Pie and Cocoberry each, as they were the only two of the fall collection I was really eager to hold on to. Picked up a few others to try while there and wound up not spending as much as usual. Forty bucks, maybe? I was amazed and so pleased with myself.

And then I found Teavana at the other end of the mall.

I will always be a David’s Tea fan and going in to Tavana solidified that in me. Teavana was a really neat shop and their workers were really knowledgable, but I felt kind of intimidated by it all. Teavana felt a little bit elite-y. Like if you don’t have two hundred dollars to spend on a tiny cast iron teapot right there you’re not welcome. I fell in love with David’s because I could walk in in pajamas and a paint-stained t-shirt and the girls were perfectly happy to chat with me for an hour and weird stuff. I spent about $60 at Teavana and I don’t really feel like I got that much tea out of the deal, but I’m probably just being a fussy baby about it.

To soothe my crying baby-ness and to keep me going after getting up early to do my Halloween makeup, I brought some My Morning Mate in to steep at work. I tried one other last night that I wasn’t so impressed with, but that’s an issue for another review.

My Morning Mate is an interesting tea, and I knew I was going to love it when I bought it. It’s chocolatey(and anything chocolate is a plus in my books) and nutty and I don’t find myself getting bored of the taste. Taking it in and sifting it around a bit, I definitely get some very rich, deep notes that remind me of those chocolate covered espresso beans; sweet and warm with a little kick to get you into gear. It tastes as good as it smells and if nothing else takes me back to Teavana, this will be one I’ll go back for.

I don’t get some of the poorer reviews of this tea. Then again, I was trained by tea snobs.

The aroma of this tea is heavenly, and when I first drank it I wasn’t sure that I was actually tasting the tea or smelling it. The smell was just so powerful – but I’m pretty smell-oriented, so I didn’t at all mind. Second time around the smell is still quite present, but I let the tea sit for a few hours. Not intentionally, mind. I was working on making a candy bowl for my work for Halloween that should be pretty neat when I’m through with it, but I got sidetracked and this tea wound up sitting on my counter for four hours.

When I finally got back to my full cup, it was cold. But with the scent diminished a bit, it gave me a chance to really take this tea in for the flavour, and wow was I ever impressed. If you’re not getting enough flavour, you’re not letting it linger long enough. Savouring this tea cold was an absolute joy, and I will definitely be getting more of this tea before it goes.

I seriously love Libre. My first bookkeeping job was with Libre Tea and having seen some of the inner workings only makes me love it more. The owner of the company is one of the reasons I’ve fallen so hard for tea. I’d go up to the office and she’d bring me some loose leaf peppermint tea in one of these beautiful little Libre glasses and it made learning the ins and outs of the job all the more enjoyable.

Now that the rest of my family is catching up with tea, all of them are getting more use out of their Libre glasses. As someone who doesn’t like to oversteep tea even a little bit, I haven’t tried putting the leaves in the bottom of the glass and drinking through the strainer. I prefer just to steep and remove. But this glass is perfect for that. Minimal leakage, very hardy(I’m a dropper, I can’t help myself) and I’ve had no problems with my tea not being warm. I will always recommend this glass and this company!