Night In Rio

Mmmmm this is a happy herbal tea for me. Kittenna/Raritea if you hate this, just send the rest back my way haha Something about the blend of this one really works for me. it’s a juicy cup of tea..pineapple, papaya…blackberry…i like this one a bunch!

This tea is so fun! Like a taste of summer in a cup. I picked this up from the Toronto Tea Festival this past January, where I got to meet Daniel in person (he’s incredibly nice and just as charismatic and enthusiastic as his website/social media outlets suggest). He helped me pick out several blends to take home, and the instant I sampled this one I knew I had to have it. The taste is heavy on the pineapple, just the way I like it. I can’t wait to try it iced.

I received a sample of this from a teapal and, to my surprise, it’s right up my alley. I usually avoid pineapple blends because the pineapple flavor tends to be really cloying and/or it doesn’t mix well with the other ingredients. That is not the case with this blend. I’m so glad it’s an herbal that’s predominantly fruit. The pineapple really shines, and the flavor reminds me of freshly juiced ripe pineapple. It’s sweet but slightly tart, and the pineapple blends really well with the mango and papaya. It’s like a tropical fruit juice blend in tea form. I’ve been eyeing T by Daniel for awhile, and this sample might just prompt an order. I can see myself enjoying a lot of this tea (mixed with other teas or alone) over the summer.

Sipdown (125)!

Thank you MissB for the tea, and all you lovely Ontarians, Kittenna especially, for getting it to me.

Even wrapped in tinfoil this one still manages to make its presence known. It’s very, very aromatic with a really ripe papaya/mango smell accented by a bouquet of citrus notes. To me, it seemed obvious that the best way to prepare this one would be cold brewed.

After a long, probably close to twenty hour, soak I strained the leaves for this one and sat down to enjoy it. Taste wise it was very strong and lively with many fruit notes contributing to what was, overall, and explosion of tropical flavours in my mouth. Impressively, what was most present to me was the papaya. And I say impressively because papaya has a relatively mild flavour to begin with: it’s almost like watermelon in how watered down the taste can be. This was very concentrated and lovely. And following that powerful papaya flavour was the almost equally strong duo of pineapple and mango. Something about those two flavours matched together can make almost anything they’re in undeniably, almost over the top tropical tasting.

This one also has sweet blackberry leaves in it; personally I associate sweet blackberry leaves with a very rich “from concentrate”/puree type flavour. To further clarify, I think that whenever they’re added to a blend they don’t necessarily have their own flavour but they amplify the flavours of everything else in a blend ten fold. DAVIDsTEA also likes to use them in their herbal blends: Pink Passionfruit and Sweet Apple Cider both immediately come to mind. They just an a relatively “over the top” vibe to tea that I really like.

tl;dr If it wasn’t obvious, I was really happy with this tea and very impressed overall!

Final tea of the split ones we picked up at the Tea Festival. This one is actually not a blend I’ve had before, so I have a much more favourable opinion of it. Basically, it tastes like a fruity pineapple juice. Which is pretty tasty, though not my favourite flavour combo. I see that Sil rather liked this one, though, so I’m going to call this a sipdown (976), and she and Raritea can have the rest.