Arthur Dove Tea Co.

Steeped this one over the weekend and it was nice – crisp and mint forward with medium bodied chocolate notes on the back end. I’ve had a handful of mint and chocolate teas over the last few months from multiple companies, and this is sort of right smack in the middle of all of them – perfectly nice, but not anything exceptional either.

Caramel is such a tricky flavour to get right in tea and I don’t think this blend nails it perfectly, but it gets pretty close. I’d describe it as “sweet and brown”, sort of in the vein of Della Terra’s Pineapple Upside Down Cake – if anyone remembers that blend. No fruit notes though, just that similar cakey sugary flavour. The salt comes through more than I expected, but isn’t strong – it works very well in the blend, and helps sell the “caramel” flavour more than what it would be without the salt.

I like this one.

Cold Brew Sipdown (1103)!

I cold brewed this one for over twenty four hours to get it super intense/strong, and then after that I strained it and mixed it 50/50 with some lemonade to make a “Strawberry Fields Lemonade” cold brew and that worked really well. I could very clearly and distinctly taste both the tart and refreshing lemonade but also the very sticky sweet candied strawberry/strawberry soda type flavours from the tisane.

This was one of the teas I had for a #SeptemberSipdown prompt about having caffeine free teas, and I picked it because it was a sipdown but now I’m thinking that if it’s something that Arthur carries year round that it’s the type of strawberry profile I might like to have a larger amount of…

Raising my rating slightly from the 79 I had first ranked this at.

Definitely a different strawberry than I had expected – more syrupy and sweet like the sugar syrup that might be used to make a strawberry soda or to flavour milk/top icecream with. I enjoyed it a lot, but it caught me off guard because the LLT appearance is a bit more natural and herby looking. There was some tart hibiscus backbone to the cup, but more sweetness than anything else. Seems fitting of its musical inspiration, though!

Cold Brew Sipdown (1070)!

This made for a really nice cold brew but I’m actually a little bit surprised because I think I ended up preferring it hot? The flavours are all the same as what I observed in the hot cup, though a little heavier on the banana and orange notes and with less coconut. However, something about having it cold brewed definitely dipped into that sort of strange “fruity bubblegum” territory that blends can sometimes venture into. It’s not an unpleasant flavour zone to be in – but I think I enjoyed the more direct tropical citrus notes of the plain hot cup more.

Another tea from Arthur Dove with musical inspiration! I hadn’t heard the Wham! song that this tea is named after, so I decided to do the same exercise with this tea as I did with Lull where I steeped the tea, found my own song that matched the taste of the tea, to me, and then listened to the actual song to see how I compared…

Here’s the song I picked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBXdL2tw3HM
The actual song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYX0sjP6Za8

I’m actually pretty happy with how close the two were! Not totally the same thing, but I think I definitely got the vibe that Arthur was going for. In terms of taste, I’m also quite happy with the blend – it’s really sweet and tropical with notes of vibrant, juicy fresh oranges, pineapple, and banana with a creamy little twist of coconut. Fresh, packed in flavours, though still a light and refreshing body to the infusion. It’s always interesting when that happens where the taste is so packed in there but the tea still feels light. Love that!

Finished a mug of this a few minutes ago and was really impressed!

It’s both a buttery and soft banana as well as a nice ripe and sweet one, and it complimented beautifully with the sweet fudge/toffee notes that were the grounded undertone carrying into a sweet finish. I want to write more, but I’m heading into a meeting so this will have to do for now – but it was honestly just really good!

As soon as I saw this on Arthur Dove’s site I knew I wanted it in my life.

It tastes quite delicious steeped up. The rose is, understandably, the most prominent flavour but it’s a sweet and weirdly juicy feeling rose that reminds me of rosewater turkish delight and jellybeans. It’s not the rose I would have expected from this tea, but I am very much feeling it. There are hints of chocolate and a marzipan like almond note and both compliment this sweeter and indulgent feeling floral tea. I had it hot and plain, but I could very easily see this making for a unique and delicious rose latte.

Last month I was a guest on Arthur Dove’s IGTV “Biscuit and Brew” series, which I talked about in a part tasting note at some point – during the live, I mentioned that I was sad that I couldn’t order directly from them because Arthur wasn’t yet shipping internationally.

Mostly I just wanted to make sure that he knew, when he was ready to, that he would have a customer in me – but to my delight he offered to put together a sampler and ship it out to me here in Canada. That sampler arrived on Friday, and of course I could not wait to dig in. Because we had talked about this tea on the live it was the one I immediately wanted to try first! I really loved the idea of incorporating Lapsang into the French Toast profile, but that hint of smokey deliciosness.

The steeped tea is pretty nice. In terms of French Toasts teas I’ve had (of which there have been surprisingly quite a lot) this does fall on the lighter end of the spectrum in terms of intensity of flavours – even with that hint of Lapsang. I think, in a perfect world, I would want a bit more richness, but I actually like that it’s not so in your face sweet because that makes it a French Toast tea you could reach for in your cupboard a lot more easily without having to be in the mood for sweetness.

Sipdown (1072)!

My steeped tea came out a sort of off putting grey purple colour that, for whatever reason, is making me think of zombies. However, it tastes freaking delicious and I’m a little upset to be finishing off this blend which I didn’t expect to end up enjoying so much. Complex ingredient list overall, but in terms of taste this is very much a baked apple cinnamon type of profile, with just a hint of coconut as well. Very cozy!

Cold Brew!

Steepster is “running” for me now – but it’s moving so slowly that I’ve really not bothered to do much over the last few days. However, I don’t like getting backed up on tasting notes so I want to at least try to get a few up. I’m going to wait on things like the remainder of the new DT blends from the recent collection – those tend to be LONG tasting notes, and I don’t think I have the patience to deal with glitches while writing those ones…

Definitely disappointing though – I hate not getting those posted within a week of a collection launch. Ughh…

Like a lot of Arthur’s blends, this tea was crafted with music in mind – in this case, to taste like his single “Lull”, after which the tea is named. Obviously I wanted to listen to the song while drinking the tea, but I had the idea of drinking the first half of the brew and finding my own perfect song to match the tea & then listening to Lull for the second half, to compare the two pieces and see if the music I felt drawn to was in anyway similar to his inspiration.

If you want to hear the song I chose, I’ll link it below (along with Arthur’s song). It’s fair to say we had some differences in style, but what was very interesting (in a shocking kind of way) was that lyrically there was definitely some overlap!! It was a cool experiment, and I’m definitely going to try it again with his blend Hound on the Hunt as well!

In terms of taste, this was a thoughtful mix of cinnamon, sweet florals, coconut, and just a hint of tart apple. The blend feels like a mix of Spring and Autumnal flavours to me, and perhaps my view of both of those seasons as “transitional seasons” are what drew me the song I selected, which explores reincarnation and the melancholic longing for and reminiscence of past relationships.

My Song Pick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFzi5eIxe94
Arthur’s Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASNz64B-mLQ

Tea Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/CD6rB_BAqFt/