Featured & New Tasting Notes

Superanna gave this to me as a gift from her recent trip to Disney. She bought it because it was recommended for iced tea.

I can confirm that while it was a perfectly fine tea for drinking hot with breakfast, it really did shine as an iced tea. I made about a liter of it and it was gone in a flash. I don’t like for ginger to be too hot and was tempted to pick out any bits before brewing but decided to try it as is. The ginger was not too strong for me. I found it barely noticeable, actually, and feel it is adding just a bit of sparkle to enhance the taste and no unwanted (for me) heat.

This tastes like desserty rooibos. Cold with sugar and milk, it’s a lot more decadent. I don’t see rum specifically, but I think it’s good!

Another sample from Dan. Thanks, Dan. I spilled most of the first brew all over myself. Luckily, it smells really good, and most of it was absorbed by my jacket. And I didn’t break anything.

Flavor: Hay, veggies, long summer grasses. Minerality and some butter . The first infusion was definitely the best one.
Wet Aroma: That’s really nice. Very vegetal with a slight creaminess, a hint of butter, and minerality. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much from this one, but I am pleasantly surprised. It reminds me of War Elephant by Rakkasan Tea.
https://theteahouse.com/products/yellow-meadow

April Sipdown Challenge Prompt – drink a floral tea

I love lilac scent and ours just finished blooming. I am drinking this tea and burning lilac scented candles to keep enjoying the memory.

I tried this hot and iced. When I blend two steeps I get a good result but this time O drank the first steep hot and iced the second and it was weaker than I wanted. Next time I will blend two steeps up front and chill half or I will just make chill a full strength steep. I am have been a little spoiled by how marvelous Dark Iris is as a cold sweet tea the day before.

Traveling Tea Box Tea #14
I am assuming this is this tea? The bag just said “cranberry carmel apple” and I think I noticed another tea in the teabox from this shop… anyway, it’s a sipdown and gone now, so it won’t be a mystery for anyone else. This one reminded me a bit of Forever Nuts but with the addition of cranberry. Plenty of cranberries in my sample size, but I couldn’t really taste them over the other Forever Nuts flavors. I’m a fan of all the variations of that blend that I have tried, so I’m not complaining.
Steep #1 // 1 teaspoon for a mug // many minute steep

Tea: Dragonwell by Unknown (Random Steepings)

Rating: 70

This is one of the packages of tea my friend Todd brought back for me from his China WorldCon trip, so I don’t have a lot of details about the tea or manufacturer. I know it’s a Dragonwell, and may or may not have been purchased from a place called “Friendship Teahouse.” Everything else is a mystery!

It is very old now because he brought me three bags of 100g each, which is just huge for me when it comes to tea (I usually refuse to buy anything that only comes in that size and will look for retailers offering 50g or by-the-ounce). So I’ve just been making coldbrew with it, 6g to a liter of water, steeped overnight.

I’m not sure if it is this particular Dragonwell, the coldbrew preparation, or the age, but this one tastes a lot less vegetal than other Dragonwell’s I’ve had in the past. There is some of that there, but it lacks that strong “green bean” or “garden pea” sort of flavor I’m used to and instead there is a sort of sharp, citrusy note I’ve never had in a Dragonwell before. It isn’t unpleasant, especially as a coldbrew, just a bit odd and interesting.

I have one more bag of Chinese green tea to finish up from Todd’s haul, which is a Bi Luo Chun. Since I had around 3.5g left in the Dragonwell bag and use 6g of material to coldbrew, my next coldbrew jar will be a Frankenstein combination of the two teas. That should be interesting.

Flavors: Grassy, Vegetal, Citrus, Lemon, Sharp

Well, we’ve definitely hit the “showers” part of April Showers here in Montreal this week, so I think this brand new tea is pretty perfectly timed with it’s debut…

I had a ton of fun working on this blend, which kind of came about based on a lot of customer requests for teas to help with scratchy throats, red eyes, and the like during this time of year. We have some other blends in the assortment with ingredients that can be a good fit for that depending on the individual, but it was a nice creative challenge to put together a new blend that’s a bit more dedicated to snuffing out those sniffles and runny noses…

From a functional standpoint, the hero ingredient is Greek Mountain tea. This is not DT’s first rodeo in terms of carrying a blend with Greek Mountain tea – we’ve had Greek Honey and Mint Olympus in the past. I actually like Mint Olympus a lot. This is a very different flavour profile to both of those, though. Much, much fruitier leaning. And actually, in terms of flavour, I would describe this tea as very bright and fresh with an apple-forward profile complimented by lightly tart and cheery notes of hibiscus and some more cooling, herbaceous, and minty undertones. Really channeling freshly sliced red apple primarily, though! I actually adore it from a solely flavoured-based perspective and I’ve been drinking it a lot cold brew and iced, personally.

Of course the Greek Mountain Tea, which has a long history of use helping with breathing and seasonal allergies, is adding to that herbaceous undertone. If you’ve not had this tisane on its own before, I find it a bit basil-like in taste but also kind of lemony and citrusy. There’s also apple mint and eucalyptus (also great for congestion) in the blend, but a lighter amount of eucalyptus than in DT’s other infamous eucalyptus blend Cold 911. This one doesn’t taste like drinking Vick’s Vapor Rub. The apple mint adds to the fresh, cooling feeling and bolsters those fresh and lively apple notes.

Like a half year or so ago I actually had a really, really nasty case of strep throat that wiped me out for almost a week. I was wheezing when I was breathing and lost my voice entirely for days. During that period I drank a lot of straight Greek Mountain tea, but what I couldn’t say on Steepster at the time was that I was also rotating quite heavily between drinking pure Greek Mountain and large mugs of this tea as well – and honestly it was very relieving! I was very thankful to have a small stockpile of it at home prior to it officially launching. One of the perks of developing the teas, I suppose.

…and I know not everyone loves hibiscus, but I really want to shout out the hibiscus in this blend. It’s very largely cut and just beautiful visually. I know that aesthetics (especially dry leaf aesthetics) are only a small part of the overall cup, but it does feel good being part of creating a tea that’s just really, really pretty.

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.

Nearing the end of the box and eyeing replacements on Amazon, including a loose leaf variety, which can only improve the quality of this nice, deep, bass-note tea. It’s one of those that doesn’t inspire novels or poetry, but is friendly, easy to drink, and disappears from the cup quickly.

TTB! This was very plant-like. I never quite got along with it despite trying it a few different ways. It didn’t have the depth I hoped for.

My cousin who now lives in Australia brought some tea when they came for my niece’s wedding. This one is Sticky Chai from Coffee Works, a place that does coffee and tea. There is some honey mixed into the tea, and its a mostly licorice note, not so much clove or cardamom. It doesn’t have ingredients on the package or on their website. This is an interesting enough tea, although one dimensional. I wouldn’t purchase, but it will be a nice fall or winter cuppa.

Wait… what?! This smells like roses when dry, but when I sip I taste mint?! Like a spearmint with a floral undertone. I let the cup cool a bit before diving in this time. I’m still getting spearmint with rose and citrus. It ends up being almost savory, but not quite. It’s a really interesting flavor combo. As with many flavored greens, I’d like to try this cold steeped sometime. I don’t hate this, but I’m not in love either so far.

In other news, I caught a gateway parakeet yesterday. He is all food comaed out after gorging himself last night and I’m waiting to see how he perks up before looking into getting another. They are highly social and need to live in groups, hence the gateway title.

Edit to add: Geranium! I’m tasting geranium and thinking spearmint! Funny how those overlap in my brain.

This is from an older TTB. I don’t notice the fruitiness here, but my partner thought it tasted like pineapple. The black base does taste high quality though!

A little note here since I had already made a page for this tea after remembering gmathis said this is an Adagio blend.

Back in October on a roadtrip to Arizona for a wedding, I decided I need to quit my job. The drive back through wide open Nevada desert and up US-395 (I’ve driven large chunks of it but the entire length is on my bucket list) worked in the same manner these days as hallucinogens did 20 years ago. Six months later here I sit, finally on sabbatical for 2 months minimum. I have never been able to be in this position in my life and am grateful for my supportive boyfriend and family.

I don’t know why I brought this up. Maybe as I look out the door on a rainy day, watching my cats who are now almost a year old, one of whom just broke off a big branch trying to climb a massive jade plant, I feel a bit lonely not being around my core group of 7 people all day. And then I remember how simple yet formative the distant relationships were that grew out of my time here on Steepster.

I suppose this glimpse into my current life is a thank you to gmathis for being a steady member during my time here. I appreciate your acts of kindness, and as I sip on this little Christmas gift, I realize everything will be okay with a few cups of “Cinnamon Apple Pancakes”.

Herbal TTB! This is light and smooth and fruity. I’d totally drink this again! It’s rare to see bagged green rooibos teas!

Traveling Tea Box Tea #8
I actually didn’t hate this, despite the atrocious steepster reviews here from some (most) of you, haha.   I guess I expected it to be worse when I saw reviews of ONE/100?   I mean, the flavor isn’t anything appealing or delicious, but it isn’t too bad.  It tastes like a garden center/ flower shop.  Kind of like a nostalgic, wandering around the plant store in Spring kind of flavor.  So I can tolerate it.  It tastes like another tea I have had before, but I am forgetting what it is right now.
Steep #1 // 1 teabag for a mug // 15 minutes after boiling // 2 minute steep
Steep #2 // just boiled // 3-4 min

2026 sipdown no. 15

I found the green base quite harsh, unfortunately. Rather than adding to what could’ve been a somewhat tart mango, it took away from any fruit flavour that could’ve been.

This was pretty smooth and nice! The lemon isn’t sharp at all. It’s just pleasantly herbaceous and gently fruity. It’s not the most interesting, but good enough!

Sipdown

April Sipdown Challenge Prompt – drink a fruity tea

I love orange and vanilla together so this was sure to be a hit. What surprised me was that I experienced SuperAnna to love Combray and like this one but I feel like the reactions went the other way. She liked both but said Combray was way more vanilla than cardamom and she had expected more cardamom, but still thought it was good.

This tea got a big “ooooooo!” when she sniffed it so I think it was the preferred of the two for her. I also like the both, but I think I might be more inclined to repurchase this one if I could only get one.

Traveling Tea Box Tea #7
I opened the tiny tin of this and it looks very similar to a blend that I loved, that I have since been on the hunt for. It was a Special Tea Company blend with coconut and pineapple (actual fruit pieces) on a black base. The way the fruit is cut here LOOKS the same. I’m not quite convinced this is the same blend… as the black tea here wasn’t very deep and dark. But the coconut and pineapple were pretty well done and balanced. The fruit seems the same as the blend I remember, so maybe it is from the same wholesaler, it is just that the black tea base would probably have changed after all these years? There is one serving remaining, so I might keep it…
Steep #1 // 1 1/2 teaspoons for a full mug //20 minutes after boiling // 2-3 minute steep
Steep #2 // just boiled // 5 min

Found this after I purchased some cacao husks from another source. I went through the bag very quickly. Great chocolate taste without the calories from hot chocolate. I bet it would be pretty good with a little sweetener.

This tea smells so amazing when dry! Lots of cardamon. Once steeped there is a bite to it that I can’t figure out. I’ll sometimes have to take a few sips of a tea to acclimate my tastebuds, but that didn’t work with this one. I caved and added some creamer which took the edge off and turns it into a cardamon heavy/no clove chai profile. I feel like I’m missing something with this tea. Lower temp? Shorter steeping times? Maybe I’ll get to the bottom of this mystery before getting to the bottom of the bag.

Traveling Tea Box Tea #5
This is why I love a teabox. I would say a LOT of the teas in the box are shops I have hardly heard of. I would never get to try these teas most of the time, if it wasn’t for a teabox! Now I see this shop has stopped operating. This looks to be green tea with birch. Other than a Simpson and Vail blend (Glacier), I don’t think I have had many other birch teas. Much like that one, I don’t really notice distinct birch here. So possibly birch tastes a lot like tea leaves? The green tea, if I had to guess, seemed to taste more like guayusa and looked like guayusa…
Steep #1 // 1 1/2 teaspoons for a full mug //31 minutes after boiling // 2-3 minute steep
Steep #2 // 30 min after boiling // 3 min

I’ve had a million chocolate mint teas over the years, and this is definitely one of the better ones! There’s no murkiness. There’s a good ratio of chocolate to mint. I’m drinking it cold with milk and sugar, and it’s lovely. Not special enough to seek out, but enjoyable!

April 7 Sipdown Challenge Prompt – World Health Day: drink a tea that you believe is good for your health

Sipdown April 8

So often we say not to push the health benefits of tea because studies may be skewed or poorly done. I can say that tea has been good for my mental health because it was a huge part of learning to invite people over and be more social. Talking myself out of a soda on a hot day and having a cold steeped tea instead is definitely healthier for me.

Matcha is often touted as one of the best for you teas so I chose this. It is one day away from a sipdown and I have two new ones in my cart already. I plan to get this one as well as the extra thick grade as well.