10238 Tasting Notes
Sipped on a mug of this Saturday morning while doing podcast outlines!
We now have five podcast episodes recorded (two of which are edited/finalized) as well as an intro episode and a trailer! We’re so excited that we’re SO CLOSE now to being ready to upload episodes – we just want to make sure we have a good stockpile so that if there are weeks we can’t record it wont mean nothing gets posted. I think one more day of recording and we’ll have enough to upload! Aaaaahhh!
Also – this tea was nice! I picked it because it’s a mate blend, and I wanted something to drink but also that would help me focus and I feel like I got that from the cup. The flavour is very apple cinnamon, but has a specific note to it that makes me think of pie. I think it’s the fact the apple tasted baked and borderline caramelized and mild/delicate cinnamon flavours I just subconciously associate with pastry…
This tea was given to me for free by INI Sips as a prize for coming up with the name for the blend! As some of you may know, I have named a handful of different DT blends – so maybe I have a knack for naming things!?
It was very cool to get to try the tea that I had named though, so thank you INI Sips for both picking my name and sending me the tea!
I enjoyed this more than I expected to – and it’s not that I had low expectations but I’m just kind of more neutral towards the flavour of papaya. However, this is a nice sweet and tropical tasting white tea and while I do taste papaya I more taste the sweetness of the pineapple and that’s obviously a flavour I adore a lot! I think it would be really nice chilled, though this cup was hot, but because the base is a white tea there’s not as much body/richness. I do like a gentle/soothing tea but in this can more body is something that the sweeter and more exotic/tropical tasting fruit notes might benefit from.
From last week – I typically try to order a different bubble tea from the menu each time I make an order with Meiwei, but I guess I had forgotten trying this one already because I’ve clearly already entered it into the database and reviewed it…
Anyway, it was nice and it complimented well with the Peanut Butter dumplings that I was eating but it was a little thin tasting and note as richly coconut (not necessarily sweeter though) and I was wanted.
Gongfu Sipdown (1077)!
Sipped down this tasty tea sample of Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong this afternoon, which was a gift from VariaTEA! With a thick liquor and sweet and starchy notes of carmelized yams, malt, brown sugar, and red fruits – this was a delicious tea break for the afternoon!
It’s also my choice for today’s #SeptemberSipdown prompt, which was a gifted tea. To be honest, my tea friends and the tea community in general are some of the most generous people I’ve come across so I have probably hundreds of teas from over a dozen people that could have worked for today, but Rachel is the very first person in the tea community that I connected with on such a deep and real level so it feels right that I highlighted a tea from her today!!
Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/CEw6CHZAJer/
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbcYxDZo2u8&ab_channel=DelWaterGap
Fun fact – this is currently my most listened to song on Spotify…
So when I saw the prompt I thought of the teas that actually came gift wrapped from people. I never thought about the teas you gave me as gifts because it seems so natural to our friendship to just share ALL the teas! But you’re right, they are gifts and they are awesome so thank you! Now I feel like I should have shared a tea from you – goodness knows I have more than enough to choose from.
Grandpa style – stretched over the span of a morning while working from home.
This was another pick for #SeptemberSipdown and the theme for the day was a tea you had forgotten about, and with 1000+ teas I’m sure I had a great number of teas I could have chosen from – but I just went with the first tea I saw this morning, while looking for a pu’erh I could grandpa brew, that I had forgot either purchasing or that I still had. In the case of this tea, I was pretty sure I had sipped it down but I am delighted to be wrong about that!!
Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/CErophfAunh/
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uusq4190XOA&ab_channel=BoyCalledCute-Topic
Flavors: Brandy, Dates, Earth, Leather, petrichor, Wet Wood
I’m doing a challenge on instagram for September called #SeptemberSipdown, which is basically a no buying ban for the month as well as a daily focus/theme to encourage drinking through your tea stash…
I need both of those things in my life right now, so it timed out well. This was for one of the prompts – The oldest tea in your stash. While this prompt could be interpreted as the oldest AGED tea, I think it was meant to mean the tea you acquired the longest time period ago so that’s what I chose. I’m not 100% sure this is my oldest tea, but if not the oldest it’s gotta be in like the top ten. I went through a full box when I got into tea seven years ago because it was my favourite bagged tea, and then I rebought it and it’s taken me six years to get through it – and counting.
It’s not that I dislike it though. It actually still tastes really good; sweet and very thick and creamy with minimal spices, and the present spices feeling more weighted towards anise and sweet cinnamon notes. Clearly masking a mediocre decaf base – as most decaf teas are. I just moved really heavily away from tea bags in my tea drinking, and now I really only drink them when I travel because they’re a super convenient travel option.
Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/CEowVtwAfv0/
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnZN7RIBh9M&ab_channel=Kowloon-Topic
Sipped on this a few nights ago while catching up on some vlogs from my favourite Tea Youtubers; ironically one of them being Tea with Jann who LOVES this tea. I had nice associations with this tea before, but now that I know how much she adores it it’s hard for me to not associate it with her – so as I sipped on this mug I was thinking about all my awesome tea friends!
I steeped it extra strong and extra long, and the rest was a wickedly wintergreen heavy cup with a thicker liquor than normal. Sweet and coating, and so woodsy with those lovely pine notes and a pop of berry. Such a unique tea and, like Jann, I am also happy I have a small stash of it to treat myself to.
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.
I was hoping to have more success with this blend than Sil or VariaTEA had but this wasn’t really the case. I don’t remember either of them mentioning this, but the dry leaf smell of this tea is really off to me – it’s chocolate-y, sure, but also it kind of smells like feet!?
Thankfully it doesn’t really taste like feet (well, maybe just a TINY bit). It also doesn’t taste that good either though – kind of not properly chocolate-y and not properly berry either, and definitely not creamy. I just think that chocolate and hibiscus really aren’t meant to go together and forcing them to coexist just makes for lesser versions of both flavours.
Sipdown (1078)!
Happily finished this one off last night while catching up on some TV! I try to always have kombucha or other tea related RTD stocked in my fridge for instant cold tea for those moments where I may not have a cold brew going/ready. I don’t really drink water outside of tea, hehe…
This was good – like I said last time, it basically only tastes like fancy carbonated grape juice. Nothing wrong with that though! I’d buy it again, next time I do a fridge restock.
Cold Brew!
So smooth, and a lovely creamy flavour with a cooling and refreshing mint that works very beautifully as a cold brew. However, the fennel was stronger in this method than it is hot and that licorice-y type note was borderline too much.
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.
