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The newest tea from DT! It was the lone new tea in the recently announced batch of teas.

I want to be careful not to over hype this tea, because I would truly hate for people to see how excited I am for it and buy it based on that only for it to not live up to their expectations. However, that said, I loveeeeeee this tea! I think all my Steepster friends here know that I’ve basically been looking for my perfect “Caramel Tea” for years now. It’s my White Whale, if you will. I believe that caramel is one of the hardest flavours to capture in a tea because you need density/richness and thick flavour but you also can’t just have generic and “one note” sweetness because that’s not what caramel actually tastes like. It’s a creamy sweetness, with caramelized sugar notes and sometimes hints of molasses or fruit. Like, in the range of “sweet flavours” caramel is surprisingly nuanced and full of depth! The majority of caramel teas I’ve come across are simply not rich enough or too generic/flatly sweet. I also really don’t want caramel/chocolate – I think those blends can taste nice (ex. English Toffee from DT) but that’s _not_a “true” caramel tea in my opinion…

So is this my mythical “perfect caramel tea”? Well, no. I think the perfect caramel tea would be a black tea base – however this is SO CLOSE to checking all the boxes that I want in a caramel blend! It’s probably the best one I’ve found so far. There’s only one other caramel tea that comes to mind as anything close to what I like about this tea, so if this is not the best then it’s the second best!!

I just think it has the perfect level of thick, rich sweetness while also having that creamy note that good caramel has, the hint of fruity flavour that rounds of that sweetness, and even a tinyyyy hint of that molasses-y quality that adds so much dimension of caramel. I also do like the oolong base – it’s not really the forefront flavour, but the gentle floral notes aren’t totally lost either. The salt level is solid too – I could live with or without salt in my perfect caramel tea, but what I do appreciate about it is that salt is a flavour carried so it does add an extra bit of “oomph” to the blend, and dimension to the flavour. I taste it softly in this tea, mostly in the finish. So, if you’re wondering if you can actually taste the salt, then my answer is yes – a bit. With milk it’s pretty masked, though.

I guess the other ingredients that people might have thoughts on are the carob and the chicory. I like carob, personally. I think it has a pleasantly sweet flavour that compliments the caramel really well here and adds a subtle and less detectable layer of depth to the caramel – anything to keep from a generic or flat/one note kind of sweetness is a win in my opinion. I actually wish we used carob in more teas. I don’t personally love chicory, but I appreciate that the use here is to also add a bit more depth and lean into that caramelized sugar type of quality. I don’t actually taste it on its own, but there are people who are much more adverse to its flavour than I am so I don’t know how much it might stand out to them.

Overall, I do think this is a real win for caramel tea lovers so I hope it does well enough to stick around for a while! There isn’t anything else on the wall right now that really tastes like this, so I’m excited for people to try it and happy to have such a nice caramel flavour in my own tea rotation now!

Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/CEepa02g2Xh/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfGMS0M8aFo

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.