New Tasting Notes

5.4g, 90 mL ZZZ, water mix

wet leaf: medicinal, vanilla, sweet

1. dark, fruity, medicinal. sweet finish, a bit dank. weighty feeling

2. dark woody, medicinal, almost salty. fruity finish, a bit effervescent cherry somewhat reminiscent of the recent YQHs. serious, reflective, and a bit downing

3. bland medicinal sweet

was busy and also had to pick this up the next day after refrigerating so wasn’t quite the same and didn’t note those steeps.

5.4g, 90 mL duanni
lots of cobwebs, which I spent some time trying to pick out and then gave up because it was too hard to separate them from leaf bits. This is my shou pot, so I couldn’t distinguish if the wet leaf just smelled like shou because of that.

1. a bit gritty texture on finish from broken/powder-y bits. cocoa powder like taste and mouthfeel. bit of smoke? some bitter. mostly herbal. relaxing

2. grainy, herbal, slightly salty. last bit could be due to water though

3 and 4. similar. some happy feeling.

stopped here for work. Material is interesting, not really the bud-heavy or huge leaf ends of the spectrum for LB but sort of long gangly leaves on branches. kept leaves in fridge and simmered w 500 mL for 10 min the next day but have never had especially good results post-refrigeration or after sitting out. Tasted ok. anyway. Despite the price tag, enjoyed it more or less.

4.6g, 90ml ZZZ
wet: light fruit, smoky

1. soft woody sour. some background YQH taste. sweet cherry in finish, bitter taste when cooled a bit. same strange almost alcohol aspect as the CWS recently. slowed thoughts and motions.

2. similar. soft texture, woody, bitter, some storage.

I dropped after a few more steeps of similar notes about the texture in every steep because i was running late to something lol. Obviously have favorable thoughts on that aspect and wish I had a bit more time to sit with it. Never really reach for these, so it’s been a few years. Had tea with someone else recently and was reminded of the importance of pacing in evaluating and just waiting a bit between steeps. Have been used to chaining steeps in my routine drinking and so was often feeling overwhelmed and not picking up things as a result.

Bonus advent calendar! Roswell Strange made this calendar sound so appealing that I asked for it as a birthday present. It was so pricy that I couldn’t quite bring myself to buy it myself, but that’s what birthday presents are for :-)

So, day 1! This is a surprisingly large flower. The only other time I’ve seen a chrysanthemum tisane this big is The Qi’s royal chrysanthemum. I’m more used to seeing it as small flowers. Since it is so big and beautiful, I brewed it in a glass mug for maximum prettiness. This flower isn’t just pretty, though. It’s delicious, too – earthy and gently floral. I got a bunch of resteeps out of it too. Feeling optimistic that this will be a good calendar!

Found this while Christmas shopping at a totally bougie store in our tiny downtown. Think bougie World Market but small and curated, focusing quite a bit on Japan. Some people lose their money to gambling; if I were a more foolish derk, I’d lose thousands at this store that carries fine worldwide goods. It’s bad enough that I spent $12 on 8 sachets.

The yuzu here isn’t distinct but it does blend well with a lighter roast, grassy hojicha. Full flavor and aroma. Lots of roasted buckwheat. Bright, citrusy, mineral, roasted grass, tangy with some tolerable astringency. It was difficult to time the first steep to get it where I wanted and so I could do a second steep.

Overall, I’m kinda meh on this yuzu hojicha because of the price I paid. It’s also a daytime brew, high in caffeine. A snack or meal was necessary as I could get jittery.

I bought this sometime in 2023 to give to my coworker who was trying to manage her pre-diabetes. I saved a mere teaspoon and it’s taken this long to get to it!

Sparkling sweetness mixed with very light vegetal taste. Calm and vibrant. It’s simple and unassumingly soothing. Tonic and moistening. I’d love to try jiaogulan again!

This is another tea I drank through recently without much thought. Not until the last mug brewed with 4g:300mL did this tea really stand out as a well-roasted Anxi oolong.

Strong, sweet and fleshy floral aroma. Heady. All kinds of exotic flowers, sweet and spicy. White lily, gardenia, ylang ylang, tuberose. Good dose of galangal, a hint of cinnamon. Toasted coconut and vanilla. The roast amplifies the sweet nose and does not stand apart. Mouthfeel is not notable and the taste is mostly carried by that heady scent. One with a preference for strong aromas would appreciate this tea the most. Pretty high energy, somewhat uncomforable for me like a lot of tieguanyin from Anxi.

Better western than gongfu, so it did make a nice work tea.

Drank through 50g of this over the course of a few years without much thought. Strong purple black tea aroma. Fluid, thinner body with less pronounced taste than aroma. I love the presence of eucalyptus and mugwort mixed with the malt and juicy purple/blue fruits. Would consider buying this again if my favorite yesheng hongcha were to be out of stock.

2022 harvest

Somebody brought this into work a couple winters ago.

Smells like a combination of clove-spice cookies, molasses-gingerbread and orange sweet rolls without the really sweet frosting. While clove heavy in the aroma, the clove is much milder and smooth in the mouth, no mouth-numbing or anything. Tastes like a mulled wine tisane. Chicory gives a base to the hibiscus which is tangy-tart but not sour. Can’t say I pick up any orange. Easy to drink.

This had a lovely aroma, but it mostly tasted like slightly smoked water, even steeping for 1min 45sec over the recommended time. I’m guessing this tea was meant to be stored for less than the, uh, ten years I’ve had it…

Ashmanra’s sipdown challenge – February 2025 Tea #4 – A spiced tea

A new tea, gifted!  I have only had a couple blends before with cascara cherries.  Mainely Coffee claims that cascara cherries have about as much caffeine as green tea.  Here, the cascara cherries are blended with some excellent spices… some of the spices quite big.  Huge pieces of cinnamon.  A great balance of spices.  This is a very tasty cup.  Certainly spicy enough, but there is also a sweetness there.  I’m not really sure if I can tell if the cascara cherries make a difference in the flavor. It certainly doesn’t taste like coffee (though they haven’t in the past either.)  Not really sure the purpose of including coffee cherries, except that Mainely Coffee is very much a coffee company that also has teas.   But this is a nice addition to the tea collection, regardless.  It’s a great chai!  Guzzled too quickly…
Steep #1 // 1 1/2 teaspoons for a full mug // 19 minutes after boiling // 3 minute steep
Steep #2 // 2 minutes after boiling // 8 minute steep

Sipdown

Almost a cup of cocoa with milk and sugar I bet. I drank it plain and Ashman and I both enjoyed it. The chocolate flavor was pretty natural tasting without the weird chemical and mildew vibes.

Thank you for the trade, Marshall!!! I’m currently looking at this one and the Gyokuro side by side and being absolutely mind-blown. I mean, it’s not like this is the first gyokuro or sencha I’ve seen but knowing the work they go through to make the minor differences… Just wow.
Dry appearance is amazing. I would not have guessed this to be a sencha because that is stellar coloring. Guess I need to study up more. Needless thin and tight. Dark green with a few light greens.
Dry aroma: nice. Fresh. Bits of umami.
Flavor: Umami. Fresh cut grass.
Mouth feel: smooth.

A sipdown! (M: 8 Y: 24) — prompt: A spiced tea
Last year I was here crying, how spicy it is and I can’t handle it. But as we had some winter weather outside; some snow and a little of snowfall, combbined with partially cloudy sky, I decided to bit the bullet and try the second bag from derk. Thank you!

Well, it seems this one was much closer to her impressions — as it was mild with hints of hot. It was distinctly spicy, but chocolate was a bit hard to find. Ginger and allspice were the most prominent in this bag.

It seems that previous one contained all the habanero from the box, and this one is much closer to indeded fiery tea.

Without rating intentionally

This smells like almost rancid coconut even though the bag is only a few months old. Luckily I couldn’t taste the coconut, but I also didn’t taste much of anything delicious either. It’s basically just kind of metallic black tea. I added milk, and that vastly improved things. It actually does remind me of a float! The quality of the black tea is sort of like soda, and the coconut and vanilla give the milk an ice cream vibe. This could be done better, but it’s not bad! I’ve been drinking it as a work tea, and I’ve ended up really enjoying it cold each time! It’s weird, but I’ve grown to like it.

Cold Brew!

Definitely a sweeter fruit blend with a noticeable bit of stevia in the aftertaste, which I have struggled with a bit in the past. However, I do love a pear blend and so it’s been kind of nice revisiting this blend over the last few months (it was in the advent this past year) with sort of readjusted expectations. Basically, just knowing going into brewing it that it is quite sweet…

And so, when I prepped this cold brew, it was coming from a place of really craving something much more sweet and juicy. Given that’s what I was seeking, this tea really delivers! It’s bright and almost even just a smidge peachy at times with such an incredibly ripe, succulent, and dewy pear note with a floral-ish undertone. I want to have it as a tea pop because I just feel like those fresh, tender orchard notes would really shine with a little effervescence.

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.

I feel like I was sort of just indulging in favourite blends the last few days, and this was one of them! Definitely a cooling, crisper side from the peppermint in the blend and I do enjoy that, but it’s that sweet and very creamy almost pistachio pudding-like flavour that I was seeking out when I decided to brew this one up last night. I sipped on it slowly while watching some TV last night and it was just a solid little wind down moment.

2024 Advent Calendar #7

I skipped 6 because I had previously logged it and didn’t have any new things to say about it.
I enjoyed this peppery pumpkin-y blend. It’s not a pumpkin “spice” tea but more orange, cloves, and peppercorns. Reminds me of a dish I make for Thanksgiving time.

Made this as a Western style mug of tea and I wish I could say that I really tasted the cedar oil in the blend, but it just doesn’t seem to really come through. That said, it was still a nice mug of tea with a smoother medium-body and woody (just not cedar) leaning profile with some undertones of stonefruit and maybe, like, ginseng? Not as astringent as I’ve found it to be in the past, and once I got over the initial disappointment of no cedar I did really like the mug.

Made this earlier in the week and though it was fine tasting I did find myself thinking it was rather light in both taste and body as I was drinking it. I don’t think it was because of my steeping as I used water just off a boil and my standard five-ish minute long steep. So, it was just a bit strange. Still pleasant though, with smooth notes of both bergamot and lavender. Actually, because it was a little lighter I felt like maybe the lavender came out a little stronger than it normally does? Give it was a stressful afternoon, the extra lavender was a boon more than a bummer.

Brewed this one up yesterday! I’ve just been seeing blackberry everywhere the last few months and with Starbuck’s most recent launch of their Blackberry Sage refresher it made me think of this blend – one of my favourites from Adagio.

I actually tried the Starbucks drink and I thought it was disappointingly light on the sage, though I can see how most people probably wouldn’t want a ton of sage – it’s a little more of a polarizing flavour, so the conservative approach was probably the most commercially safe option. In contrast, this is pretty sage forward in such a soothingly aromatic way. Sage is great for aromatherapy, and I definitely was feeling that sort of blissful, relaxed vibe as I drank this mug. It’s still blackberry in a sweet, jammy and dark kind of way – but it’s almost like the reverse of the Starbucks drink which was primarily blackberry with a little sage.

Man I love this blend, though!

Tea Pop!

One of my favourite year-round blends from DT, and honestly something I should probably drink more than I actually do since it brings me so much joy. Yesterday a coworker and I made some teapops to enjoy in the afternoon, and this was the tea I picked out for us. It just slaps every time. Sweet, juicy raspberry with that soft, creamy sort of finish that rounds out the whole drink. Very 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.

Holy snow day!! Today was basically endless white in every direction you looked, so it was the perfect time to get cozy and try out this tea – one of the new teas I picked up from Toronto Tea Festival this year, and also a new (to me) tea company as well!! This tea won the black tea category of this year’s blind tasting competition, and it’s not hard to see why. Though I would maybe personally prefer a bit of a richer and more sweet milk chocolate note, the tea is undeniably very, very smooth with a pretty solid balance between the cocoa and creamy flavours with a brisk, malty and more full-bodied black tea base. It’s perfectly comforting on a day spent bundled up indoors. Well, other than the quick jaunt outside to snap some tea photos…

Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DGB4auQS3dK/?img_index=1

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iThlpKPtsdo&ab_channel=TeenageDads