Vanilla Swirl

(DavidsTea 40)

Still delicious lemony, creamy, vanilla. I’ll be sad when it’s gone.

Latte Sipdown (294)

This is an alright latte. Lots of creamy lemon notes and the stevia seems to be drowned out. However, this is by no means a vanilla tea so it sorta falls short for me.

This was the tea I was most hesitant to try. I was quite surprised to find out it does kind of taste like vanilla ice cream, but the longer I steeped it, I’m getting more of the lemongrass, which is nice. I’m not big on vanilla, so this is good. Possibly might even be better iced or as a latte. Overall this isn’t a bad tea. Don’t think I’d buy more though.

This tea confuses me…at first taste, I was like “oh yum, tastes just like a vanilla ice cream kinda.” Then I was like “ok, it tastes more like lemon with a hint of vanilla now.” Then near the end, I was back to, yes, it kind of tastes like a vanilla swirl with a hint of cone." It was magic changing flavors like that. A good cuppa tea though.

*update: Tried it as a hot latte and it was delicious-I could taste the “wafer” cone part of the vanilla swirl. Also tried it as an iced latte and tastes like a vanilla milkshake.

I can’t say that any of the new malt shop teas had me excited but they were sampling this tea at my local Davids Tea store today so I decided to give it a try. Honestly I didn’t care that much for the plain tea, there’s a nice vanilla lemongrass flavour at the start but then the stevia hits and it’s just too much sweetness for me. I realize that stevia isn’t an artificial sweetener but to me it still tastes wrong and I can always tell when it’s been used in place of sugar in something, regardless of the amount used. My take on sweeteners in tea is that I’d rather have natural sugar or honey and add it myself, that way I can control the amount that goes in.

I commented on this to the salesperson (who knows me by name – obviously I spend too much time there) and she recommended trying it as a latté. She’s made some good recommendations before so I decided to give it a shot and I was pleasantly surprised. The steamed milk dampens that weird too-sweet taste and allows a rich, creamy vanilla flavour to come out.

I would rate the plain tea as 65/100 and the latté version as 80/100.

I had this as a tea of the day while I was at the store today. I went to pick up the newest Davidsteas – but something that struck me as odd about this one was that it’s called VANILLA swirl but it contains lemongrass and pineapple!
I felt bad for the kid working the counter, I’m like BUT HOW CAN IT BE VANILLA WITH LEMONGRASS AND PINEAPPLE?!? Sorry dude, I’m one of those tea nutjobs your coworkers have probably warned you about.
It certainly didn’t smell like vanilla – it smelled like lemon. Colour me shocked.

Now, it was yummy. It was creamy and light…and LEMON. Actually, if we could just call this a lemon tea I’d be like that tea is delicious…but let’s stop calling it vanilla, ok?

Eventually this will go on clearance, and I’ll pick some up.

VariaTEA gave me a small sample of this one. I have to say….vanilla swirl, this is not. Does the tea have a vanilla taste to it? sure…it’s not strong…mostly this is a vanilla lemongrass tea imo. i mean..sure..i’ll finish this off, but colour me disappointed.

Yet another collection launched today; this time the Malt Shop collection which features three ice cream inspired teas – this one, a herbal, and two greens called Mint Chip Sundae and Strawberry Shake. This was the first one I sampled because it was the one I was most intrigued by – in large part because it was the only non green tea.

I tried this one iced and I have to say, for a tea called “Vanilla Swirl”, there’s not much vanilla flavour going on here. In fact, there’s not much flavour in general to this tea. It’s just very, very delicate with the faintest presence of the lemongrass, pineapple, and white chocolate. In that order, as well. I think a more accurate name would have been Lemon Froyo or something like that? Because definitely seems more on the lemon side of the spectrum than creamy vanilla. Inaccuracy to the name aside, though, I didn’t hate this one. I mean, it does ring in as my least favourite of the collection but when you discard the incorrect name it’s a nice, subtle lemongrass tea with some faint creaminess.

Though, I was hoping this would make for a good vanilla latte and I just don’t see that happening – the delicate flavour would get completely drowned by the milk.

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.

I sampled this in-store. I was really wary about it because I’ve had bad experiences with herbal infusions before. First sip – all I could taste was pineapple. That ruined the tea for me, because I dislike pineapple as both a fruit and a flavour. However, I drank what was left in my cup and held it in my mouth a bit longer – eventually I did get the impression of soft serve vanilla ice cream, as advertised.

Long story short, I don’t like this tea, but that’s due to personal preference.