10238 Tasting Notes
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.
Gongfu!
Like I said in another tasting note a week or two back, I’m trying to make the most of the time I have available for outdoor tea sessions (before it’s winter) so I packed up a bunch of tea and teaware yesterday and a massive thermal carafe of hot water and had a whole afternoon of tea drinking in the park yesterday.
Syrupy liquor with ripe peach notes, and a finish with more astringent and bitter peach skin notes overtop a greener undertone. It got dark during the session, and I had to move to a different area of the park with lighting, so I finished the session under the light of the baseball stadium. It was not the ambiance I expected, but something about the deep blue and purple sky contrasted with the yellowing leaves of the teas was actually kind of magical and I felt like it added to my last few steeps of the tea.
Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/CGTMkgagQ67/
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kk4BZ3uOSHI&ab_channel=DORIANELECTRA
I’m just finishing up a mug of this one currently, and I’m quite into it – it’s sweet and creamy with lots of pistachio pudding notes but mixed with pops of cherry and refreshing and citrusy lemongrass it makes me think of something more Middle Eastern inspired that I can’t put my finger on. They use pistachio and sweet fruits in a lot of pastry and desserts though, so that’s probably what my mind it thinking of.
I’m nearly out of this – I don’t need to restock because I have so much tea, but I really want to restock this one when it’s gone. I think the shop still carries it, but under a slightly different name now…
At some point I should actually do the math and figure out how many Harry Potter inspired blends I own, because I have a gut feeling it’s actually a lot higher than I think it is – especially with more on the way from a recent Adagio order. I wanted Halloween teas, but couldn’t resist adding in some fandom samples too. I was trying to decide what HP inspired blend I might drink for… reasons… Maybe podcast related reasons…
I had too many options.
Another new one from Friday’s new collection drop…
I’ve had this one about four or five times now and while I didn’t initially love it the blend has grown on me with subsequent tastings. It’s sort of positioned as a tea to aid in digestion, but y’all know I’m not big on the wellness push with teas so I’ve always just focused on taste of this blend which is pretty accurate to its name…
The primary flavour here is absolutely citrus – a bright, full of life and fresh orange/tangerine that feels lively on the palate. It took me a while to place it, but it’s really similar to the same fresh and pointed citrus note in Midsummer Night’s Dream, complete with that very slight acidic ‘tang’. This comparison is only strengthened, to me, by the additions of a delicately floral oolong base and the sweet and refreshing finishing flavours of spearmint after you’ve finished each sip. It’s not a perfect comparison, but this does sort of feel like the “older sister” (if you will) to Midsummer Night’s Dream; similar profile but a bit more refined/a bit less sweet. You also have the introduction of turmeric and ginger to that sweet orange/spearmint combination. The ginger is light but throughout the sip, and I think it tastes like with the orange (think “The Skinny”). As for the turmeric, I think it’s a more mellowed turmeric as far as turmeric goes – turmeric can be quite the dominating flavour. Instead, that bit of earthy and woody spice seems to more “ground” the flavour and help balance it from being too sweet/cloying. Longer steeps will bring that note to the forefront, though…
Also, this blend has the COOLEST looking ingredient visually – these awesome Georgian candied tangerine slices that look so incredibly cute! I’m not even sure what the last time I was that excited about an ingredient in a blend. Not only is it this cool, chunky looking visual but they actually add such a nice taste too – really contributing to that sweet tangerine note on the top of the sip that makes this blend feel so bright and fresh. While it’s sad to break them up, I would really recommend “crushing” them before steeping if you have the time to do so – it just really releases that flavour!
Is this my favourite? No, but I’m enjoying it – especially chilled. I prefer Midsummer Night’s Dream though that might be at least partially be from the nostalgia I have surrounding that blend. Though it wasn’t intentionally crafted with the idea of being like MND, this blend does remind me of it though and for that I do appreciate it a lot.
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9VEEdt_dR0&ab_channel=BeyondLyric
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.
Cold Brew!
Did my best to follow the name instructions for this one, but I don’t have ice at home so I had to settle for cold brewing it! It was very good though; super smooth with the appropriate titular “mixed berry” flavour – but skewed a bit towards raspberries. It tasted very familiar to me, and familiar in the sense of another tea I’ve had quite recently but I couldn’t put my finger on what the was specifically. I enjoyed this one a lot though; it was refereshing and flavourful while still tasting natural and not being cloying.
I love when people use Lapsang in flavoured tea blends soooo much!
The dry leaf of this one smells a little savory, like liquid smoke and BBQ, but the taste is all rich milk chocolate and marshmallow with whisps of smoke throughout. It’s delicious, and gives me the feeling of burnt marshmallows at the end of a summer BBQ or when camping, when the area of practically drenched in the smell of smoke and the fire is dying down – the nights where you can almost feel the nostalgia of the moment in the air.
Definitely liked this one, and look forward to trying it again in the future!
Possibly the worst RTD I’ve ever tried.
This is an oat milk based matcha latte, so I definitely didn’t expect it to have the same level of richness/creaminess as a “regular” matcha latte. What I didn’t expect was for it to taste just this level of vile. I took a sip of it from the can, and immediately spat it out on impulse. It tasted like seaweed mixed with lemon juice and starch. The mouthfeel was slimy. It felt unnatural. I tried to give this the benefit of the doubt of potentially “seperating” so I poured the can into a mason jar to give it a stir, and I was shocked that this “latte” was not opaque. Mind you, it was cloudy but the same kind of cloudy as a strongly brewed matcha would be. I would not have been able to tell you based on visual that there was anything in this to make it a latte.
It’s basically just very bad matcha, mixed with citric acid as a preservative. Noooope.
I placed a pretty big sample order from 52Teas recently and while there were obviously many teas that I had an interest in trying this is definitely the tea that based on name alone I was most excited for. Something about the name just sounds so delicious to me, and the potential/concept had me practically drooling…
Sadly, it’s not what I expected it to be. Mostly it tastes like some type of orange infused wildflower honey, and while that is delicious it’s not exactly what my brain associates with “honey butter cookies” so my initial reaction was to be let down. The orange just felt so out of place to me. Now, I think next time I drink this (with my adjusted expectations) that I’m going to enjoy it a lot but this cup was just more of a write off.
And it’s okay if the tea didn’t totally fit my picture of it – so many other ones from this order have either met what I thought they would be or excited that expectation, so I’m a happy camper either way, haha!
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.
From earlier in the week!
Something about this one still heavily reminds me of mandarin chicken sauce, but I was getting a lot more woody flavours from this cup too. It’s a weird enigma of a tea for me where there’s a lot going on flavour wise and I always struggle to put my finger on exactly what. I enjoy it a lot though!
