New Tasting Notes

Cold Brew!

I have a love-hate relationship with this tea, but today I’m really enjoying it. The top notes have a quite distinct note of white chocolate before transitioning into a sweet cranberry and red fruit jelly profile. Definitely not a tart cranberry blend, at least with this brew. I do wish the mouthfeel and flavour were both a little creamier but I also feel like beggars can’t be choosers and the white chocolate note is rarely so defined as it’s tasting right now.

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.

Cold Brew!

I haven’t had this tea in a long time and I couldn’t remember if it was actually lemon flavoured or not. After my first few sips it was pretty apparent it isn’t flavoured in any way, but it was still quite enjoyable with a brisk but clean-finishing black tea profile perfectly reflective of the base that a Southern sweet tea is usually made from before the lemon/sugar gets added in. A little malty and coppery, with a touch of floral undertones. Very, very smooth and overall quite neutral. Definitely no complaints.

I was steadily working my way through this case, but I think it might actually take me longer to finish it off that I thought now that I’m on vacation – I’m leaning less into that routine of drinking an RTD first thing in the morning as part of my commute. This was slurped down on my last day before vacation though, and WOW did I need it. So many things to wrap up before taking this next week off, so I really needed the focus/routine.

I’m on vacation for the next week, so I’m kicking off the break with a taste test! JusTea was kind enough to send me their new herbal teas in advance of yesterday’s launch, which I’ve decided to cup all together as a vertical tasting!

Lastly, the Lemon Ginger! This is a staple profile within my tea stash, and actually one of the rare times when I prefer teabags or sachets over loose leaf – it’s just more convenient for when you feel sick, which is usually when I’m reaching for a lemon ginger tea. So, with that in mind, I think this blend had some steep competition with other teas I already own. Pun not intended. It held its own very well, though, with really lively notes of lemon balanced by a pleasantly earthy and warming ginger. The heat level was good, and I loved the soothing, tingly sensation it left on both my palate and throat. Great balance of the two flavours with neither masking the other.

All three teas are very fresh, bright, and zesty. The ingredients lists are simple, which really allow the quality of each ingredient to show.

Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DMdJ1__RQif/?img_index=1

I’m on vacation for the next week, so I’m kicking off the break with a taste test! JusTea was kind enough to send me their new herbal teas in advance of yesterday’s launch, which I’ve decided to cup all together as a vertical tasting!

Sunset Chamomile wasn’t as personally up my alley as someone who struggles a bit with the taste of chamomile, but I still think it was very smooth with the defined honey and apple-like notes that I associate with higher quality chamomile and the touch of lemongrass was a nice addition of soothing citrus. In the future, I would probably add a little honey to better suit my own tastes. However, I think anyone who already loves chamomile would definitely enjoy this tea.

Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DMdJ1__RQif/?img_index=1

7.12g for this mini – Wow, this tea is smooth in more ways than one. First of all, the lighter notes of the white tea serve to smooth out the stronger raw pu-erh tea. But on another level, the bitter notes of the raw pu-erh are smoothed out by the sour Meyer lemon notes and the sweet and creamy caramel notes. This tea finds an interesting balance between the bitter, sweet, and sour elements. Yum.

I’m on vacation for the next week, so I’m kicking off the break with a taste test! JusTea was kind enough to send me their new herbal teas in advance of yesterday’s launch, which I’ve decided to cup all together as a vertical tasting!

My fave of the three was Hibiscus Glow, which had such a vibrant, berry-like flavour and just a really clean, crisp finish. Because of its tartness and acidity, sometimes hibiscus can be very drying on the palate and rather sharp or shrill, but this one came off as beautifully balanced and cheerful! It also had a very nice level of natural sweetness. I rarely make iced or cold brewed teas using teabags, but I actually think this would be a blend I’d make an exception for. There are lots of fun ways to brew this up, especially now that it’s summer.

Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DMdJ1__RQif/?img_index=1

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcD6kZ8adzM&ab_channel=DenisonWitmer-Topic

I had the same song pairing for all three, but I’m just going to capture it once here in this tasting note to not be repetitive.

Sipdown! (14 | 117)

Another iced milk tea! This has a similar base to Castella, with those teeny tiny CTC pellets.

I’m not generally a chocolate tea person, but this is lovely as a milk tea. The chocolate tastes very dark and cocoa-y, and even a touch boozy, as if there were rum in the cake or buttercream. I don’t taste coffee, but it’s unclear from the description whether there’s intended to be any here or not. The base is very strongly malty and a touch woody.

Never got around to trying this one from the Summer Fruit collection I bought in May, so I figured I should remedy that.

It’s nice enough. The base is a mix of Keemun and Ceylon, so it has some earthy notes but is also a bit brisk and quite acidic. As for the strawberry, it’s definitely more on the candy side of things, but it does have a nice tang to it that keeps it from being too sweet. I think I will probably enjoy this and the Raspberry version most as milk teas, as the base can be a bit hard on my stomach when taken plain.

Saved this teabag from a hotel in England. This doesn’t get great reviews, but I actually really like it. It’s malty and just hearty enough. I had a lot of English breakfast teas in the UK, and I think this may be my favorite.

June Sip down

Aroma: Honey, cough drops, & hibiscus

Cold brewed.

Tasting Notes: I sipped this down with a friend, and I noted, “Tastes like beets.” Their note, “Reminds me of pickled eggs – vinegar, beets, sour, & salty.” 45/100

June Sip down

Aroma: Tomato sauce or soup; vinegar, earth, & spices.

Tasting Notes: Freshly picked tomatoes (earthy-sour bite), oatmeal, & corn mush.

June Sip down

Another cold brewed tea…This time, it worked!

Notes: The apple cuts the intensity of the hibiscus, so it’s not as tart as I would’ve expected it to be based on the dry material aroma and listed ingredients. Well rounded, slightly sweet, and great for a warm day. 71/100.

June Sip down

We’re nearly at the end of July and I’m working on my June sip downs…Lol.

Notes: Cold brewed. Works well plain, however, I think this tea would benefit as a sweet tea. 65/100. Perhaps the next time, I will add a little sweetener.

The flavors here are quite strong! I taste a grape flavoring and a floral flavor. It was served hot, but I took some home and refrigerated it. When it was cold, the floral flavor was definitely more dominant. Since that’s not something I love, this tea ultimately ended up not being for me, but I did enjoy trying it!

So ginger. Much wow.

This strikes me as a Rishi-style blend for some reason. The ginger is extremely potent, enough that it feels spicy and tingly on my tongue. It’s difficult to taste the citrus notes alongside such a powerful ginger flavor. I did add some clover honey, which helps tame it just a tad.

This isn’t something I would personally drink, as the ginger is too spicy for me. But it was certainly interesting to try, and I’m sure it would work wonders for my digestion! XD

Wow, I knew the moment I opened this bag that I would enjoy this tea, and I was not mistaken! I love basically all earl grey teas, and I was initially skeptical that this one would taste too artificial. However, the notes of vanilla and citrus are most pleasant and taste as natural as can be. I also enjoyed that there is a nice strong presence of bergamot here – though that could be because I used a tablespoon of tea instead of the recommended teaspoon per cup. In all, this was extremely enjoyable and I look forward to having more of this tea.

I found this at Costco. I cold brewed it with two bags in my pitcher.

Oooh, that is tasty. It’s very tart and hibiscus-forward. The orange and mango make themselves known at the end of the sip. The orange flavor reminds me a little of Tang. There’s a bit of grape flavor at the end too. This would be great for sitting on the back porch on a summer evening, watching the dog run around.

6.46 grams – The floral element of this tea struck me most on the initial steep – strong grassy florals. As I drink further on, I notice some apricot but this tea also leans in a grapey direction, and I get some caramel sweetness. The bite is pretty strong on this one and I notice some “aspirin” taste in the bitter element of this tea, reminiscent of the “Gas” mini I recently tried, but thankfully accompanied by a fuller range of other raw pu-erh elements.

I don’t recall exactly how I found this tea company, but I stumbled upon their website somehow. They have some interesting blends, and offer samples for $2 a pop, so how could I resist? XD I will say, the samples are fairly generous too, with enough tea for two large mugs.

This is the first tea I saw from them, so I figured I would steep it up first as well. It’s quite lovely. I sometimes have issues with blackberry and mixed berry flavoring tasting chalky to me, but thankfully this one isn’t like that. It has a lovely sweet-tart fresh blackberry flavor to it, which goes so well with the citrusy bergamot. The flavoring level overall is somewhat restrained, but I can still taste both flavors clearly. The base has a touch of musty earthiness, but is also somewhat tannic, so I assume it’s a blend of multiple black teas.

So off to a good start with Apolis! So nice to find a blackberry flavor that I enjoy, and looking forward to trying more teas.

Sipdown! (12 | 115)

Last bag of this, and sadly they don’t carry it anymore. I really enjoyed it as a cold steep, it has a nice balance of sweet and tangy without having hibiscus, and the orange and sea buckthorn go so well together. So refreshing and thirst-quenching.

I did see that Tealyra now has a green rooibos blend with a lot of dried sea buckthorn, so I may have to give that one a go whenever I order again. This time around, I’ve opted for a selection of fruit infusions from Simpson & Vail, as I’ve never tried any of theirs.

Nice milk oolong with strawberry flavor. Resteeps well.

Some recent conversations about barley tea and the onset of beastly hot weather made me hunt some down. No luck locally, so I added a bag to an Amazon order and it arrived just before the thermometer hit 100 this weekend.

It had been years since I’d sampled barley tea, so I had no particular brand or specifications in mind. This is just as I remember it—a little sweet, wheaty, and nutty; excellent cold. (As a matter of fact, I haven’t tried it hot at all.) The tagless bags seem a little bit dinky, but two of them in a pint jar in the fridge overnight are adequate.

If the packet lasts till fall, I can envision it as a lovely hot nightcap with honey.