Dorothy

Still loving this. I am a fan of peach & apricot, and this just fills my kitchen with a lovely scent when I brew it.

It can turn bitter quickly, so giving it a bit less than 3 mins works well. I didn’t make a tasting note for this before, but I’ve also enjoyed it iced. (Hot brew then chilled in another container with lots of ice)

Looking back at my review 8 months ago, I still feel the same way about this tea. It has a very unique, “magical” sort of flavour to it. It has an amazing balance between heavy, earthy, oolong notes and the lighter milky and buttery notes. By far, my favourite DAVIDsTEA.

Since that review I’ve read debates about the natural or unnatural methods to make it. I enjoy learning more about tea in general, but I let the drinking experience speak for itself. With DAVIDsTEA Milk Oolong it was love at first sip.

This met my expectations nicely. Light bodied, full flavour darjeeling. Nothing to complain about here!

As an added bonus, most of the leaves are quite whole so I can enjoy this in my gaiwan or small glass teapot. I’ve tried this with the normal 3 min steep time, and also with short steeps with many infusions. Both are delightful in their own way.

Light bodied, soft, mellow flavour with a spicy finish. The resteeps were enjoyable, and the quiet flavours gave me a lot to think about. It’s the sort of tea you have to pay a lot of attention to, to notice the mild notes.

I’m not in love with this tea, but it was an enjoyable treat to purchase once.

This turned out to be everything I expected. Enchanting creamy oolong, with a lot of different flavours working together in harmony to keep my taste buds happy. It tastes very “complete”, I’m not sure what could be done to make this any better. (Awesome job Mr. Chen!)
After unfurling, the tea leaves are a happy shade of green, and they have quite the thickness to them.

My only advice for brewing this is to give the leaves plenty of water to unfurl in. With a small tea vessel like a gaiwan, you won’t need a full teaspoon. I’ve tried this with short steeps and the regular +/- 4 mins.

edit: here’s a photo of one leaf and a quarter (sorry for image quality, I have an old camera) http://i.imgur.com/0JXZ3.jpg

I’ve been trying out a few different steeping methods to get the best possible flavour out of this. Normally I don’t bother so much with a tea, but this one seemed a little too ordinary at first. With a bit too much water or leaf, the unique flavours are too subtle. I found that with about one teaspoon and only about 100ml (the volume of my gaiwan) of water yielded the best results. On the note about using a gaiwan, I didn’t have any problems with small particles getting in my drinking cup, even though it consists of big broken leaves (no strainer required).

With those settings, it reminded me a lot more of the other guangdong tea I have (Mi Lan Xiang Feng Xi, oolong). The once subtle notes have strengthened a bit, and its beautiful core flavour (terroir flavour?) is more apparent.

It whispers gently to my senses and commands my full attention to appreciate it. Not to say it’s my favourite, and it certainly hasn’t awed me. The best aspect of this tea is its core flavour, which is very different from other black teas and probably due to the location that it’s grown in.

I’ve still only made a small dent into the 50g tea pouch, but I’m looking forward to getting to know it better. It’ll probably be another one where I’m not sure of my true feelings about it until I’ve got just a few grams left.

I was really surprised at how tasty this one turned out to be. I’m not always happy with the flavour of herbal blend teas. It turned out to just sweet enough, fruity, and didn’t taste like something you’d find in cold medicine.

Very happy with my purchase, it’s a nice alternative to tea when I want to drink something fruity without the standard “tea” flavour.

Bought this in my last order with some other black teas. Lately I’ve been trying black teas from different regions, this one is from Guangdong, China. A little pricy, but I am willing to spend extra money to try something new once. :)

The tea leaves smell sweet and slightly earthy and malty.

Drinking the tea, it starts out slightly sweet and tangy, quickly fades to a earthy and malty flavour. The tea liquor is dark enough, but it’s a light tea, not “heavy”. About the sweetness, it’s mild like an apple or a pear, not sugary-sweet.

Second steep seems much tangier, kinda like if someone squeezed a bit of lemon or lime in your tea.
Third steep was weak, maybe I’ll try more tea leaves next time. Alternatively, maybe I will do a lot of quick steeps in the gaiwan.

I’m not sure what I was expecting from this tea, but this wasn’t it. I’m happy with the flavour but this was an unexpected drinking experience. It’s certainly given me a lot of flavours to contemplate. Looking forward to getting to the bottom of the bag and figuring out how I really feel about this one.

When I first smelled this at DAVIDsTEA I wasn’t sure about buying this or not, just because I didn’t like the scent (green tea + fruit makes me think of flavoured medicine)
Well I needed some more green tea for the house so I bought it anyways. Of course this also has black tea and green rooibos in it, but it’s in the green tea section of the store so it must have a larger amount of green tea.

There are so many ingredients in this one that I can’t even really pin point what I like most about it. But it works together really well, and it tastes great. I also think it has a wonderful cost to price ratio. It’s also a good resteeper; during a party with friends, I resteeped it four times and no one seemed to notice a drop in flavour.

I’ve tasted better blends, but this tea exceeded my expectations so I’m happy with it.

(This is a continuation of my first tasting note today.)

After the first steep, the flavor changes pretty dramatically. Jin Die starts off like a typical black tea, but my second to sixth steeps all tasted like pu-erh!

So I used 3:30 for the first steep, and then 4:00, 4:30, 5:00, 5:30 and finally 6:30. I gave the six and last one a bit longer because the color faded on the fifth steep.

I’ll absolutely be resteeping this one from now on. It’s like I get 2 different teas with just one teaspoon of leaves. I can’t believe how on the second steep it suddenly becomes so earthy, smoky, slightly malty and just pu-erh`y. I used a small teapot for this, next time I’ll do shorter resteeps with my little gaiwan. :)

Up’d the rating due to the awesomeness of this tea.

I originally bought this because the tea graphic looked awesome. And looking into my tea pouch, it’s full of these cute little golden curly leaves. In the teapot, they unfurl to reveal long buds.

Tea liquor is velvety and heavy in my mouth, the flavour has a bit of spice (like pepper), it has an almost smoky quality to it, and a mix of other interesting flavours. (I’m not great at picking out the more subtle flavours, but they are nice!)

Looking forward to giving this a lot of resteeps.

I dislike sweetening my tea or adding anything to make it taste better, but this Assam Banaspaty needs something. I added a small amount of grenadine (fruit syrup), and now it’s actually pretty enjoyable to drink. :)

I’m down to the last couple of teaspoons of this, but every cup is going to have a bit of grenadine. I can’t stand how sharp tasting this is by itself.

I ran out of green tea at my house and decided to pick up two from DAVIDs (this and Green Seduction)

The loose leaf and flavoring smelled pretty good to me. When I brewed it at home, it just seemed way too sweet, and it also reminded me of caramel candies (which I don’t like)

My husband seems to like it, so it’s not a complete loss. I’m just not fond of overly sweet drinks.

I’m not a big fan of green tea or tasting flowers, but I always have a soft spot for jasmine green tea.

Butterfly Jasmine tea is a bit expensive, but I use it as a nice tea to have on special occasions. It has a delicate green tea flavor that doesn’t get sickening to drink after each resteep. I just finished my 25g bag of this, and I’ll probably get some more the next time I visit their store.

Overall I think it’s a very likeable green tea, and it’s fun to watch the tea unfurl.

Had some of this at lunch today. Peach Apricot keeps the flavors simple, and it’s an easy one to enjoy.

I plan on making some of this iced later. :)

My Dragonwell came in the Orient Express sample pack. I’m not exactly sure how to rate this because it’s my first experience with Dragonwell (I’m also not a big fan of green tea).

Drinking it, the flavor starts out very vegetal, slightly buttery and ends with nutty. The aftertaste is something different and hard to describe, it lingers in my mouth for a while too.

Not sure how much I like this. It’s enjoyable for a green tea that’s heavy on the vegetal flavor. But the aftertaste just leaves me feeling confused. I probably won’t buy any additional Dragonwell from David’s, just so I can try a different company and gain more experience.

I wasn’t sure how much I’d like this so I only bought 25g. It turned out to be a great purchase and I’ll be sure to buy more when I’m through the bag.

It’s smooth, a bit spicy and malty, and earthy. What a wonderful experience. :)

Never tried this from the bagged tea box, mine is from a large vacuum sealed plastic bag (and is Orange Pekoe grade loose leaf).

Smelling the dry tea leaves, it reminded me of a root beer float (doesn’t taste like it though).
I found this to be a nice flavored black tea. I thought it might be a bit too sugary but that wasn’t the case. It has a subtle maple flavor and the black tea (which is from Sri Lanka) itself mixes very well with it. The black tea isn’t too bitter or sharp tasting. Sweet enough by itself, you shouldn’t need to add anything extra to it.

The other tea reviewers mentioned a dry feeling at the back of your throat. I sort of get that, but it doesn’t seem too bad. Maybe it has something to do with the bagged version?

Wow, this is so buttery and smooth. I’m not usually a big fan of green teas but this is really nice. Not too grassy or vegetal (which is a plus for me, but I know a lot of people like those characteristics)

I only tried this because it’s in the Orient Express sample pack. I won’t buy more because it’s really expensive ($22 for 50g). If price isn’t an issue for you, I’d highly recommend checking this out (even if you don’t normally like green tea).

My tea came from the Orient Express sampler (Korean Sejak, Gyokuro Yamashiro, Dragonwell).

Impressions on the first steep; sweet, delicate, slightly vegetal. Tea leaves smell sweet as well. The liquor is kind of a bright green color.

Second steep was much more vegetal, not sweet at all. Much more of a robust flavor. On inspection of the leaves, my husband remarked that it smells like fruit roll-ups (omg don’t ask me, I don’t know why he said that!)

Will I buy more of this tea? No, probably not. I’m not a big fan of green tea (I like it, but I don’t love it), so it has to really impress me to become a favorite. Overall I thought it was a pleasant green tea with a nice sweet flavor. Easy to enjoy and not too difficult to brew right.

This reminds me of Black Needles from DAVIDsTEA, but this is a bit “spicier”, more earthy and slightly less sweet. When it comes to black tea buds you really can’t go wrong. Yunnan Da Ye Hong is another easy to enjoy tea that can be drunk multiple times a week without getting boring or sickening. Also I think it’s a shame not to resteep teas like this, the second and third steeps are very tasty.

In the bag, the tea leaves are cute little curly buds (no broken bits, just lots of little buds). The tea liquor is so delightfully smooth when you drink it. There is a bit of spice and grains flavor to it, but all of the flavors have a soft, almost fuzzy sensation to them. It doesn’t jab you with any strong or bitter flavors.

Not one of my favorites, but still a nice tea to relax with.

I absolutely love this particular Lapsang Souchong. With some others I’ve tried, I don’t get the same strong flavor unless I add extra tea or steep it for at least 6 minutes.

Such a strong smoky and malty flavor. Not normally the sort of thing I drink in the summer, because it has so much “warmth”. It always reminds me of camp fires, which is a comforting thought in the winter. It’s my favorite tea, so even in the summer I don’t go a week without at least one cup. :)

Bought this on a whim, because my husband needed some more black tea for work (their electric kettle only boils). He doesn’t tend to savor the tea at work, so this one worked out alright. For the taste/price ratio I don’t think it’s worth it.

Due to the sharp flavor, it’s not one of my favorites. To me it tastes too much like standard “black tea”. I’d rather be drinking Black Needles or Lapsang Souchong (yes, even in the summer!) I will not refill this one, but I don’t feel any regret for trying it once.