Sunshine Chai

I didn’t know if I would like this one when I ordered it, but it smelled like Adagio’s golden turmeric chai, which I actually miss, so I decided I’d end up enjoying this one after all. The flavor is mostly pepper and ginger plus a little sweetness, and it’s tasty with milk. The turmeric is mild, only adding a slight heat. I’ll definitely get through this bag in no time. It leaves a nice tingle on the tongue. A different time I had this, it ended up actually quite spicy, so I guess it depends what ends up in your teaspoon. I enjoyed the heat. It’s fun to have quite hot as a latte. I’ll miss this one.

Welp – Spooky Season is officially over, and that means that DT is rolling hard straight into the holidays. There’s a bunch of new teaware and kits on the website right now, as well as a few returning holiday favourites – I’m not writing tasting notes for all the returning teas because I have several already for most of them, and a few are teas I try to stock year round anyway…

However, in browsing the new teas I did realize that this tea launched a little while ago and I completely forgot to write about it!! It was meant to be part of this year’s Chai collection, but it was a little late to the party and wound up launching a bit behind the rest of the teas – hence it’s sneaky arrival and how I missed writing my note.

I like to this of this one as the sort of “answer” for people who liked Turmeric Glow or Coco Chai Rooibos and were disappointed when both of those teas were retired. It’s not really the same thing, and I don’t think anyone is really expecting fans of the latter mentioned teas to view it as identical – but it draws some inspiration from both blends and has comparable aspects. Basically, it’s a coconut chai with turmeric!

I’m not a massive fan of this blend myself. That’s primarily because I don’t like a lot of Chai blends or typical Chai spices, and the two most prominent spices here are ginger and turmeric – ginger being a spice that I have an especially contentious/polarizing relationship with. However, I do think the spices are pretty well balanced, and I like that true to both Turmeric Glow and Coco Rooibos Chai they don’t feel heavy – this is more of a mild/warming Chai then a sucker punch you in the face with spice/heat type of chai. When you compare it to the other chai in the rooibos catagory, Cinnamon Rooibos Chai, the fact this is much softer and smoother is even more apparent…

The thing that I do really like about this blend in the coconut – I think coconut chai is a really nice profile, and I’m personally very glad that DT didn’t want to abandon that concept entirely even though they discontinued Coco Chai Rooibos. The coconut brings some sweetness to the blend, and has a very nice silky/creamy mouthfeel and taste. It makes for a very smooth cuppa, and is especially delicious when you make this tea into a latte. I personally find the coconut a bit richer here than in Coco Chai Rooibos, but neither are necessarily the over the top level of coconut you might have gotten from, say, Coconut Cream Pie…

Overall? It’s not a blend for me – but it’s fun and well balanced. I hope people enjoy it, though I can completely understand how upsetting it can feel to have a favourite on the tea wall replaced.

EDIT: Just a side note – thank you DT for not just calling this cramming the word “Gold” into the tea name just because there’s turmeric in the blend! There are other aspects of turmeric you can riff on aside from the golden colour, and at a certain point it just feels uninspired to recycle the same naming scheme. I appreciate the allusion to the colour through “Sunshine” a lot more!

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 regarding the teas, and not the company’s.