Salted Caramel Oolong

Got this one at the behest of a lowered shipping rate and as a personal quest item.

I love oolongs-I love caramel-and I’ve enjoyed sachets for work, and the ingredients were interesting to me. I also want to thank Roswell Strange for a good opening note on this one to give me an idea of it.

It’s definitely artificial and cakey in its caramel vanilla smell, but the taste was actually enjoyable for me straight. It’s not too far off from a medium roasted oolong, but sweeter. The pineapple and carob (or is it chicory?)combo was a weird one that actually worked for me-the carob thickened up the body of the caramel so it would not taste like a diabetics suicidal wet dream. I should know, since I am -a diabetic.

I was surprised at how much oolong I actually tasted. It’s not strong, but the oolongs own buttery notes thickens the caramel and adds viscosity to the tea. It’s got some malt too from the caramel flavoring, but it’s a medium to thinner tea overall with THICC flavor.

I actually returned to this one a few times. It is good with just a small amount of sugar, and it can be good with the right honey-but honey can overwhelm the tea itself and the vanilla added with the caramel. I personally think that black teas are the way to go for caramel if it’s the right kind of black tea, especially a Yunnan or Fujian one, but I am pleased that they did this with a greener oolong since I think that helps nail the texture right.

I still prefer my naturally scented jasmines, Earl Greys, and loose blacks, but I am really pleased with this one. I’ve yet to have a tea that has been this close to nailing a caramel I like, and most others I’ve had either over or under do the caramel. This one is almost right, and there is no doubting it’s flavor.

I had to break isolation and go all the way into the city because the damn library wouldn’t let me renew my book anymore, so I decided to swing around to the only DAVIDsTEA still open in my region and pick up a few things I’d been eyeing.

I noticed they were bringing back a few old blends online-only as well. Hmmm. Maybe.

Overshot the steeping time on this one, but it didn’t turn out bitter, although the roast of the oolong may have gotten a bit sour. I mistook the giant sugar crystals in the mix for salt and kind of made a face at the dry tea, but it’s definitely not salty. Perhaps just enough to enhance the caramel, but nothing more. The pineapple adds to the acidic apple taste, definitely settling this more in the ‘fruit tea feel’ for me. ‘Kind of drying, a bit watery, steeped fruit pieces’ slightly lacking that body I like with more ‘tea’. I would have liked to taste this blend without the addition of the pineapple, to see how it stands.

Otherwise, the caramel is present, creamy, enhanced and lingers into the aftertaste. The roast of the oolong adds to the ‘sea salt’, but otherwise doesn’t overwhelm or interact badly with the added flavours. The oolong they use is… very small. Definitely not whole leaves, confirmed once they expanded in my strainer… Basically tattered shreds. It doesn’t take away from the tea (smaller tea fragments probably held the flavouring better), although definitely results in a darker brew (medium-deep amber).

In the end, it’s not a love or a hate—it sits in the same park as the Maple Syrup Oolong for me. Most of DAVIDsTEA’s flavoured oolongs kind of occupy that zone… The fruit bits detract a bit from the taste. But this definitely tastes like caramel, helped along by the dissolved sugar and caramel bits, I’m sure, heh.

I made this as a latte. I put 4 perfect spoons of this blend to make a super concentrated tea and frothed up some milk to pour on top of it. I think with the milk it tastes better because it subdues the saltiness and caramel notes of this blend. It makes it into a creamy, slightly salty, oolong latte. However, I do not think I will repurchase this tea again due to its strong artificial taste.

Sipdown 39

This just wasn’t as good as I remembered. Way too salty, even after I picked some of the salt out. The apple flavor is also quite strong and kind of odd. Maybe it’s because of it’s age, but it was just meh.

this one wasn’t bad. It’s no salted caramel from france, but it’s the best that i’ve had from a non fancy french tea place :)

I saw Kittenna pulled this out for National Fragrance Day and thought that was such a great idea since it smells amazing. However, I wanted to drink it side-by-side with the Dammann take on the same profile. Check out the tasting note for that tea here: https://steepster.com/rachel12610/posts/416694

The interesting thing to me about these teas are how they both capture the same flavor while being drastically different. This tea is a lot heavier/syrupy and more in-your-face vs. the more light and subtle, but still flavorful, Dammann tea. It’s a stark contrast between the European attitude and the North American one.

This tea is sweeter. It leans more on a caramel candy which is sweeter and chewier than just the flavor caramel. Because of that, the oolong is present but comes second to the flavors. This is less so the case with the Dammann tea where the oolong and flavor are more balanced, perhaps with the oolong being slightly more of the focus. Granted that’s reflected in the very naming of the teas as well seeing as Dammann puts Oolong first whereas this tea is Salted Caramel first.

Both are good in different ways and I think as a plain tea, I prefer the balance of the Dammann tea. That said, the stronger/bolder flavor here, makes this better for a latte as it can stand out among the milk.

I wasn’t initially super impressed with this one when I first tried it straight up. It was essentially everything I don’t love about David’s Tea dessert teas: a drowned out (green oolong) base, smothered by sugar and flavouring.

As a latte, however, it’s something else. The lush offerings of salted caramel candies fill the void that generally only the decadent fall dessert beverages of Starbucks fill. It’s still very sweet, but oh-so perfect.

This (as a latte) gets bonus points for pleasing a wide array of family members as well. My mom and sister both tried to drink from their empty cups, and wanted refills. That must count for something.

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.