DAVIDsTEA

I received a taste of this in a sampler pack I bought last summer, and liked it enough to order a package. I may get tired of it by the time I’ve used it up, but I like it well enough.

I received it as part of a sampler pack, and liked it a lot, so was delighted to receive a pack of sachets as a Christmas gift. It smells and tastes wonderful and isn’t too sweet.

When I first tried this matcha a year ago I wasn’t that impressed. In my opinion I did not want to try this matcha as a latte because of the butterfly pea flowers and ginger flavor. I tried it first with water. This time I made it iced mixed with lemonade. Wow it is so much better this way. It intensifies the flavor. The lemon turns the drink purple too. Unfortunately it is not available right now but I hope it comes back in the future.

Tea Pop… but extra!

I steeped this up today as a little tea concentrate with a smidge of added agave, and then I mixed it with ginger beer instead of sparkling water. Basically it was a super rich, juicy and refreshing drink – like a ginger beer with tropical flare. The mango really comes out in particular and even the guava feels more heightened and sweet in contrast to the spicy ginger notes. Very fun!!

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.

Tea Pop!

A few nights ago I stopped at the DT store in Laval since I was already at the mall. Of course I had to grab a tea to go, so I went with a Jungle Crush tea pop lemonade. So juicy and refreshing. It’s interesting, I thought the lemonade might bring out more of the mango in the blend but it was actually the guava I tasted most of all. Absolutely adored it though! This blend is definitely quickly becoming a summer favourite of mine.

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.

Iced Tea!

This tea released last year for the summer, but it was only available in stores. Now, however, it’s available online too – I’m really happy about that because I enjoy this tea a lot and it made me sad that now as many people got the chance to try it. It’s one of my go to iced teas for that juicy, fruity and caffeinated afternoon refresh. Ripe mango and tropical guava with a creamy coconut undertone. Very tropical and lively.

In case you missed it, we’ve released two different “summer collections” so far this year. The first was essentially all the expected heavy hitters that typically come back every summer: Hibiscus Splash, Green Passionfruit (though now organic), and Bahama Blue among others. The second was a trio of vote back teas that were decided on based on customer requests: Countess of Seville, Caramel Shortbread, and Lavender Buttercream.

Of course, there’s still lots of summer to go…

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.

Iced Tea!

Though most of my tea drinking for December has been advent teas, I have managed to sneak in a few other teas on some of the days I’ve gotten through my selection faster than others. At work, in particular, I’ve been making a lot of iced tea. This is one that I’ve been really into lately. Juicy and sweet with strong notes of ripe mango and guava candy. Very refreshing and tropical. It’s wild how much I’ve been craving tropical flavours in particular given that it’s the middle of December…

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.

So this is a new tea! It launched back on May 5th (the same date as Watermelon Heat), but as a store exclusive blend…

As I think I mentioned with Peaches & Cream Oolong, which was also store exclusive, I had a lot of mixed feelings with store exclusives. Some of it is, for sure, bias because of course I want the teas that I worked on to have a wider reach and be tasted by more people. It’s tough to set that emotion aside, for sure.

I think this is the first tea we’ve introduced with a Guayusa base since Queen of Tarts, and that was back in (I wanna say) 2013!? Maybe 2014!? So, like, it’s been a long time since we’ve worked with this ingredient again. I was really inspired to create something bright and tropical, but also very lush and juicy as well. Since I was looking at a lot of rainforest and coastal jungle imagery when conceptualizing the blend, guayusa just seemed like such a great addition to lean into that – and of course our Mate/Guayusa section is a little bit on the sparser side so tea wall diversity with types is always something I’m mindful of. Though we did introduce a couple other seasonal mate blends this year to help fill out the category, like Horchata Chai and La Vida Coconut.

As for taste… Well, I’ve already said that I was aiming for tropical fruits! In particular, I ended up going with a bright, sweet combo of mango and guava as the featured flavours. More fresh and sweet versus the very intense and borderline jammy or “cooked down” guava that people might know from Guava Cadabra or Guava Getaway. Also no where near the same level of hibiscus. If I had to make a comparison, Gaba Guava would be closest – but if you crossed it with, like, Mango Fruit Punch. It’s very, very iceable and refreshing!

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! (5 | 320)

So I knew I had written a note for this tea, and I could see that I had rated it, but for some reason my note doesn’t show up in the list on the tea page. It does show up in my tea log if I page back to the correct date. Strange.

Anyway, this is a nice jasmine tea. I got it with a Frequent Steeper redemption, because I’m always looking for teas to spend those on when I earn them from teaware purchases. Nice sweet and natural jasmine flavor. The butterflies do take a while to open up, which always makes me feel bad since I don’t generally resteep my tea, and they’re never fully opened on the first steep. Ah well.

I think this is a high quality jasmine tea, but I certainly wouldn’t pay the $25 for 50g of it. It’s a good option for reward redemptions, although I recently bought a bag of jasmine pearls from Teavivre, so I’m set in that department for a while.

ETA: My previous tasting note shows up on the tea page now, but this one doesn’t?

Random tea time!

One from my latest round of DT frequent steeper freebies. I buy teaware fairly often from DT, but I’m not a fan of their tea blending style, so I often struggle a bit with what teas to redeem my rewards on. I figured sticking with their Garden to Cup collection is probably my best bet, so I got a few different straight/scented teas this time around.

This is a nice enough jasmine green. I’m always unsure how much to use with balled and shaped teas like this one, I think I ended up going with ten or so pieces for my 16-ounce mug, and it seems about right. The main flavor is the sweet, natural tasting jasmine that has a slight fruitiness to it. I honestly don’t taste a lot of the green tea, which doesn’t surprise me since the little butterflies hadn’t fully unfurled after 3 minutes of steeping.

Definitely a high quality jasmine tea. I certainly wouldn’t pay $25 for it, but it’s a nice option for my frequent steeper redemptions.

Also, I just ate a little kyoho grape jelly pouch, and now I feel like grape and jasmine really needs to be a tea flavor combo! :P

Iced Tea!

This new online exclusive blend launched last week, on Cinco de Mayo! This was one of my favourite blends to develop from this year’s new summer teas; getting the balance of fresh, juicy watermelon and slow building heat just right was about as tricky as it was fun – so, like, very! The inspiration was a mix of spicy margaritas with a chili salt rim and fresh fruit sprinkled with Tajin, like you might find at a Street Cart in Mexico. I love how nuanced and layered the flavours are; the (very) subtle addition of salt brings out the juiciness of the melon, while more herbaceous notes of nettle and moringa balance out the sweetness and give this more of an upscale cocktail kind of vibe versus melon candy.

As many people know I’ve been dreaming of DT carrying a Salted Watermelon inspired blend for many, many years and this tea let me realize that dream but with a gentle, spicy twist!!

Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cr_jMjdO11b/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEMsgRgCceA

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.

This doesn’t really taste like watermelon. I mostly taste the sort of savory matcha. The watermelon flavoring is a bit too mild. Perhaps it contributed a slight fruity sourness, but that’s it. Still a refreshing way to start the day!

The banana flavoring is pretty mild, and the matcha base is mild as well. This is sweet and tasty, but I wish it were a little bolder. I feel like I could taste a nice powdery banana flavor in the first few sips, but then that disappeared. I got this single serving in the advent calendar, but I wouldn’t mind trying it again to see if I can coax more banana out of it sometime.

From a TTB. This is about what you’d expect from a tea like this. I taste some mint that’s not the freshest or most delicious, but it’s okay cold. There are a bunch of other ingredients that combine to taste sort of generically herbaceous. This was fine, just very not exciting.

This reminds me of DavidsTea’s caramel corn tea that I really enjoyed from a few years back, though not quite as good. The flavor is desserty, but in a more popcorn direction. It definitely shares features with a lot of other teas from DavidsTea, but I like it more than most of them. It’s nutty and desserty and really nice with some milk and sweetener. It’s a heavy blend, so my 2 oz only made four large mugs, but luckily the resteeps were delicious as well.

Sipdown!

I felt like it would be hard to really pull off a sugar cookie matcha, and I was right. It’s somewhat buttery, but I preferred last year’s Eggnog Matcha as it was creamier and more interesting.

Can’t resist trying out all of DT’s new unflavoured teas, even though I usually prefer these from other vendors. This wasn’t bad – very classic TGY, as one would expect. Not particularly creamy, just bright and vegetal.

This was nice. I liked it more than DT’s regular earl grey/earl grey cream; the flavours blended quite well together without either the bergamot or lavender overpowering. I do still prefer 52teas’ Vanilla Whipped Lavender Grey, but this is a nice substitute to keep stashed away as well.

I have really enjoyed this tea. The dry leaf has a lovely sweet, lavender-forward aroma which carries over to the steeped cup. The flavor does make me think of a lavender frosting… it is very sweet with a vanilla cream undertone, and the lavender is lovely, strong enough to be a pervasive flavor but not so strong that the tea gets floral-bitter. My only complaint is that the apple comes off a bit strongly fruity, which does break the buttercream illusion a bit. The tea is also very sweet, so it has taken me a while to sip down my package, since it very much became a “mood” drink.

I’ve been mainly drinking this hot and plain, but decided to use up the last of the leaf in a frothy vanilla almond milk latte, which is very indulgent. The added creaminess of the milk and vanilla really pushes the sweetness, without drowning out the lavender which is by far my favorite part (I’m a big lavender fan).

Ashmanra’s sipdown challenge – April 2023 Tea #2 – April 5 – National Caramel Day

From the caramel prompt day! This was one of six teas in a Davids sample set that is almost gone now!  I haven’t written a note yet for this one.  It’s pretty straightforward — a caramel flavored rooibos.  The rooibos pieces are fairly larger than I usually see.  An occasional tiny square of caramel.   The resulting cup is a deep red, so be prepared for full rooibos!  The sweetness is there.  Sometimes it could seem like vanilla.  Sometimes rooibos itself has a hint of vanilla all its own, which I’m just now realizing.  It’s a straightforward recipe that I don’t think has stevia, so it’s good enough for me!
Steep #1 //  1 1/2 teaspoons for a full mug // 20 minutes after boiling // 2 minute steep
Steep #2 //  just boiled // 5 minute steep

So DT’s first Summer drop was about a week ago – there were lots of returning teas, but this was the only one that was brand new! Not gonna lie, like every year, this feels early. I mean, so many provinces are still getting snow fairly regularly… But oh well!

It’s a fruit infusion, similar in style to other popular DT fruity herbals like Caribbean Crush and Maui Madness. Like, both, it also has a really colourful liquor when steeped. In this case, it’s a very deep indigo/blue. What weird is that, during development and testing, the colour was so incredibly different depending on the kind of light the tea was in. In the fluorescent of our lab it was much more dark with a kind of purple-y lean to it and natural lighting it was more of a true blue. Very weird but kind of fun, though! Of course, the longer you steep the tea and the more leaf you use the darker that colour will be – so if you want a more blue blue don’t leave this one brewing for ages or dilute it partially afterwards…

In terms of taste, the main two flavours are lychee and peach. Very, very bright and juicy with just a bit of a more tart/sour top note before all those ripe, lush flavours really hit your palate. I find the lychee to be a little more strong, but I’ve also heard coworkers in the office say the opposite – so I think it may depend a bit on personal taste preferences or, possibly, just how familiar you are with the taste of lychee. Like is common in a lot of lychee flavoured things, there’s a bit of a floral undertone that’s just naturally present but I definitely wouldn’t call this a floral tea. It’s more of a sweet, fresh and fruity blend with a slight tropical lean. A hint of pineapple too – but just a hint.

It’s also fine hot, but definitely I would say that this was developed with the expectation that most people are going to drink it chilled in some way – be that iced, cold brewed, or in mixed drinks. Personally, I love a good lychee tea so I’ve definitely had my fair share of iced cups of this tea in the last few months as I’ve waited for it to launch.

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.

A kind of sipdown; but I have used all 5 grams in one session, so… not counting as one. Thank you a lot LeafHopper for this tea; and overall, I like to try DAVIDsTEA, as… sadly I can’t get those here.

I was in a mood for roasty and mineral tea after the Sweet Potato; and well that was delivered.

If I could, I would copy whole second paragraph from derk. Beautifully described, what this tea is about.

Walnuts, roast, wood, oaks, that all comes to the mind when steeping. Some minerality in the finish and aftertaste. I do not notice any fruits, but it could be age.

Steeps 15-30-45-60-… seconds. 7-8 steeps in total.

Simple tea. But good qualities here…