326 Tasting Notes
Still loving this. I am a fan of peach & apricot, and this just fills my kitchen with a lovely scent when I brew it.
It can turn bitter quickly, so giving it a bit less than 3 mins works well. I didn’t make a tasting note for this before, but I’ve also enjoyed it iced. (Hot brew then chilled in another container with lots of ice)
Preparation
Looking back at my review 8 months ago, I still feel the same way about this tea. It has a very unique, “magical” sort of flavour to it. It has an amazing balance between heavy, earthy, oolong notes and the lighter milky and buttery notes. By far, my favourite DAVIDsTEA.
Since that review I’ve read debates about the natural or unnatural methods to make it. I enjoy learning more about tea in general, but I let the drinking experience speak for itself. With DAVIDsTEA Milk Oolong it was love at first sip.
Preparation
This met my expectations nicely. Light bodied, full flavour darjeeling. Nothing to complain about here!
As an added bonus, most of the leaves are quite whole so I can enjoy this in my gaiwan or small glass teapot. I’ve tried this with the normal 3 min steep time, and also with short steeps with many infusions. Both are delightful in their own way.
Preparation
Light bodied, soft, mellow flavour with a spicy finish. The resteeps were enjoyable, and the quiet flavours gave me a lot to think about. It’s the sort of tea you have to pay a lot of attention to, to notice the mild notes.
I’m not in love with this tea, but it was an enjoyable treat to purchase once.
Preparation
This turned out to be everything I expected. Enchanting creamy oolong, with a lot of different flavours working together in harmony to keep my taste buds happy. It tastes very “complete”, I’m not sure what could be done to make this any better. (Awesome job Mr. Chen!)
After unfurling, the tea leaves are a happy shade of green, and they have quite the thickness to them.
My only advice for brewing this is to give the leaves plenty of water to unfurl in. With a small tea vessel like a gaiwan, you won’t need a full teaspoon. I’ve tried this with short steeps and the regular +/- 4 mins.
edit: here’s a photo of one leaf and a quarter (sorry for image quality, I have an old camera) http://i.imgur.com/0JXZ3.jpg
Preparation
I’ve been trying out a few different steeping methods to get the best possible flavour out of this. Normally I don’t bother so much with a tea, but this one seemed a little too ordinary at first. With a bit too much water or leaf, the unique flavours are too subtle. I found that with about one teaspoon and only about 100ml (the volume of my gaiwan) of water yielded the best results. On the note about using a gaiwan, I didn’t have any problems with small particles getting in my drinking cup, even though it consists of big broken leaves (no strainer required).
With those settings, it reminded me a lot more of the other guangdong tea I have (Mi Lan Xiang Feng Xi, oolong). The once subtle notes have strengthened a bit, and its beautiful core flavour (terroir flavour?) is more apparent.
It whispers gently to my senses and commands my full attention to appreciate it. Not to say it’s my favourite, and it certainly hasn’t awed me. The best aspect of this tea is its core flavour, which is very different from other black teas and probably due to the location that it’s grown in.
I’ve still only made a small dent into the 50g tea pouch, but I’m looking forward to getting to know it better. It’ll probably be another one where I’m not sure of my true feelings about it until I’ve got just a few grams left.
Preparation
I was really surprised at how tasty this one turned out to be. I’m not always happy with the flavour of herbal blend teas. It turned out to just sweet enough, fruity, and didn’t taste like something you’d find in cold medicine.
Very happy with my purchase, it’s a nice alternative to tea when I want to drink something fruity without the standard “tea” flavour.
Preparation
Bought this in my last order with some other black teas. Lately I’ve been trying black teas from different regions, this one is from Guangdong, China. A little pricy, but I am willing to spend extra money to try something new once. :)
The tea leaves smell sweet and slightly earthy and malty.
Drinking the tea, it starts out slightly sweet and tangy, quickly fades to a earthy and malty flavour. The tea liquor is dark enough, but it’s a light tea, not “heavy”. About the sweetness, it’s mild like an apple or a pear, not sugary-sweet.
Second steep seems much tangier, kinda like if someone squeezed a bit of lemon or lime in your tea.
Third steep was weak, maybe I’ll try more tea leaves next time. Alternatively, maybe I will do a lot of quick steeps in the gaiwan.
I’m not sure what I was expecting from this tea, but this wasn’t it. I’m happy with the flavour but this was an unexpected drinking experience. It’s certainly given me a lot of flavours to contemplate. Looking forward to getting to the bottom of the bag and figuring out how I really feel about this one.
Preparation
When I first smelled this at DAVIDsTEA I wasn’t sure about buying this or not, just because I didn’t like the scent (green tea + fruit makes me think of flavoured medicine)
Well I needed some more green tea for the house so I bought it anyways. Of course this also has black tea and green rooibos in it, but it’s in the green tea section of the store so it must have a larger amount of green tea.
There are so many ingredients in this one that I can’t even really pin point what I like most about it. But it works together really well, and it tastes great. I also think it has a wonderful cost to price ratio. It’s also a good resteeper; during a party with friends, I resteeped it four times and no one seemed to notice a drop in flavour.
I’ve tasted better blends, but this tea exceeded my expectations so I’m happy with it.
Preparation
(This is a continuation of my first tasting note today.)
After the first steep, the flavor changes pretty dramatically. Jin Die starts off like a typical black tea, but my second to sixth steeps all tasted like pu-erh!
So I used 3:30 for the first steep, and then 4:00, 4:30, 5:00, 5:30 and finally 6:30. I gave the six and last one a bit longer because the color faded on the fifth steep.
I’ll absolutely be resteeping this one from now on. It’s like I get 2 different teas with just one teaspoon of leaves. I can’t believe how on the second steep it suddenly becomes so earthy, smoky, slightly malty and just pu-erh`y. I used a small teapot for this, next time I’ll do shorter resteeps with my little gaiwan. :)
Up’d the rating due to the awesomeness of this tea.
I think I need to hunt down some of this when we get back to Etobicoke.