Erin

I’m drinking this iced today because my tongue hurts from eating hot chicken wings yesterday (worth it). I put some agave in and it’s everything I like in an iced tea: fruity, sweet, and refreshing. I don’t even care how much artificial flavouring they may have loaded this up with, to me it tastes awesome hahah. I don’t usually even like mango, but it blends in so nicely with the guava and green tea. Mmmm

Drinking this tonight with some rum, milk, and brown sugar. Omg… I can’t believe I thought this was overrated before. It’s creamy and coconutty and sweet and amazing. But I think everyone already knows how great this tea is. So I’m gonna go curl up on the couch in my pajamas and drink this and watch some star trek.

Blleeehhhh noooo do not waaaannnttt

This totally reminds me of Splash, it must be the sea lettuce. I hope this doesn’t become like a “thing” for Davids. The dry leaves didn’t turn my stomach QUITE as much as Splash did, but the tea tastes much more sea lettucey/salty/weird. I was hoping the berries would kick in and be the star, but noo :(
It’s actually not SO bad until I get to the aftertaste and the sea lettuce taste just starts taking over everything and I’m like “nnooooooooo!! D:”
But yeah, sustainability = good, David Suzuki = good, sea lettuce tea = bad.
Oh well, not my thing!! What am I gonna do with the rest of my 25g bag??!

Edit: IT ALSO GAVE ME A HEADACHE! This tea has it out for me!!!

My first tea from Verdant AND my first time using a gaiwan! There was some spilling and some burning, but not nearly as much as I was expecting!
I did a rinse, and then got up to 7 steeps before I had to go watch a movie with my roommate. Then I came back to it and did a few more steeps.
I was so surprised at how much the leaves unfurled and expanded, they filled up the whole gaiwan. The taste moved from peppery and grassy, to leafy green, to buttery, to vanilla, to sweet and juicy. I knew oolong was supposed to change with each steep, but I had never really experienced it before. The grassy notes made me think of summertime in elementary school, and throughout all the steeps it was sweet and calming. This was a totally different way of drinking tea and I loved it… I can’t wait to try the other teas I got (with better notes next time!)

Drank this to welcome myself back to Canada and back to my tea stash! And OH MY GOSH YOU GUYS I came home to a giant order from Verdant and another order from Camellia Sinensis including my first gaiwan and tons of new teas to try!! I CANT EVEN HANDLE IT. I’m readying myself for some gaiwan beginner fails but I’m super excited!!

I got this Twinings black tea variety pack for my time in Washington and I actually do like these teas a lot… but omg I miss my loose leaf!!
But yeah, this is still a great earl grey, not too bergamot-y but bergamot-y enough, and not overly astringent. Not much depth but as far as bagged teas go, it’s really good!

To me this is the standard English Breakfast, an easy tea that is hard to mess up and that I can enjoy whenever. I like it with milk, sugar, both, or straight up (which is how I had it today). English Breakfast tea will always make me think of backpacking across England (the Cotswold Way) when I was 14 or 15. That was way before I got into tea, but I drank this every day and loved how British people would always drink it with tons of milk and sugar!

Possibly my favourite non-herbal bagged tea? It’s just so nice and citrus-y. Not bitter at all. I drank this while sitting out on a blanket in the sun with my friend from high school, reading and talking just like we used to. :)

I’m in Washington state now visiting my friend and since I was packing in a hurry, I forgot to bring any tea. :( There are a few different kinds of tea bags here, though.
But yeah, this one was actually just a regular tea bag, not the full-leaf thing like in the picture. Mehh, it’s not so bad. Bordering on sour sometimes though, which is weird. Not much depth but I didn’t find it too bitter after a 2-3 minute steep.

It’s 11:50… my last chance to drink this on my actual birthday! I’m finally 21… although here in Canada that means much less. Luckily I am flying to the states tomorrow to see my friend! Good timing!
I steeped it for a minute less than last time, and any trace of overpowering sweetness was gone, leaving only cakey amazingness.
My exam today went really well too! And my friend took me for a steak dinner. And my other friend got me a new tea tin with an owl print! EXCELLENT BIRTHDAY.

Second note on this tea. Strong honey notes with a slight maltiness that really comes out in the aftertaste. Super smooth. One of my favourite black teas I’ve tried! Having a quick cup before going off to take my exam.

I got this from a little tea store up Yonge quite a ways north of Bloor that I found by accident a while ago. It was a bit pricey tea wise but I think good quality and they had a wide selection of teaware! I think 100g is the smallest amount they usually sell at once but I talked to her awhile and got her to sell me 50g of this and she even gave me a sample of some sencha too!
This tea smells milky and toasty and brews up a beautiful orangey gold colour. There is a cozy sort of sense to it. I find the taste initially just mildly grassy, then I get the same toastiness that’s in the smell. It feels very smooth and just a little creamy. Overall very enjoyable! I would like to try this gong-fu style as soon as I get a decent gaiwan.

Mmmm. The vanilla taste comes through pretty strong, but doesn’t overpower the black tea. It’s super vanilla-y but not too creamy. I think I would enjoy drinking this in the winter because something about the aftertaste makes me think of a gentle snowfall.

The tea smells nice and sweet, and there is actually a bit of a coffee note I’m picking up too. But my roommate just walked in and said “that smells like froot loops!” Huh.
But it does indeed taste like hot, liquid ice cream. Omg… so creamy. So good. I didn’t actually expect there to be such a recognizable “ice cream” taste. Could this be my favourite of the cake teas? …I’m thinking maybe.

I bought this to see how it would compare with Davids’ Oh Canada, but they are just so different! Davids’ is like rooibos and MAPLE, and this one is a bit more subdued. I actually didn’t expect to like this one so much. The smell of the tea is like a light black tea with a background of maple, it smells sweet and lovely. The taste is kind of like maple-vanilla perfectly blended with black tea. It’s just slightly malty and sooo delicious. I could see this being a great morning tea. I get a little astringency, but not much. The aftertaste verges on bitter, so I take another sip of the tea haha.

Currently at the library studying for finals (taking a 5 min steepster break!) with a travel mug of this. It was a GOOD CHOICE. This tea is like an old friend beside me going “there there. you’re great. this test won’t be so bad, will it?”

In all of Davids’ chocolate teas, I can pick up approximately the same kind of chocolate note. This tea is like that “Davids chocolate” taste, isolated and exploded. So chocolatey! I approve. A very satisfying dessert tea in my opinion. I’m not sure what to say about it though. It’s creamy and just on the edge of bitter without actually being bitter. It’s a bit mehh on the second steep. But I’ll definitely be buying a little more of this one.

Mehhh. I think 3 minutes might have been a bit too long of a steep for this one. I don’t get very much lemon from this, it’s mostly the black tea. It’s actually alllllmost like an earl grey. I think it has potential. I’m gonna try a short steep next time and maybe a tiny bit of honey or agave.

Oh my gaahhhh I finally got the cake teas! I was soooo excited for this one. My birthday is even in a few days, so I was happy that it was the April tea!
I made a few of my friends smell the dry leaves and guess what it was. They said caramel, butterscotch, and gingerbread but no one guessed cake. But when I made my other friend smell the steeped tea he said “it smells like birthday cake”!! How did he know?!
I love the smell of the leaves and the tea. The rooibos is very present, in the smell and the taste. And at the same time it’s perfectly sweet and cake-y. It reminds me of Oh Canada, which is one of my favorite rooiboses (rooiboses?).
This tea makes me think back to when I first started getting into tea. The first thing I bought for myself from Davids was the “sweet indulgence” sampler and I feel like this is exactly the kind of tea I was looking for. I will always have a major sweet tooth.
In conclusion, this tea is amazing.

Well I tried it iced and it wasn’t bad! I think I put too much agave in though. The spiced toastiness comes through in a kind of weird way, it could be interesting/nice to other people but I prefer really sweet iced teas haha. So yeah, nice and fruity at first but then the aftertaste is a little weird. I’ll be drinking this one hot mostly.

The only thing I don’t like about Tealish is how similar so many of their teas are to blends from Davids. So I went in there this time looking for something totally different from anything I had tried before. I think I did pretty well!
This seemed like a kind of intimidating tea at first, with all the different kinds of tea and the corn and curry leaves and all. But the package promised a light, refreshing cup and the leaves smelled so nice. The brewed tea smells very fruity! I can barely pick up any spice. And it is indeed light and refreshing. It tastes fruity with a light green tea taste, and I think the spice comes through in the background. I can almost feel it more than taste it, if that makes sense. This tastes amazing but it’s hard to describe!
I’m kind of surprised how much I like this. The website suggests icing it and I think this would definitely be amazing iced!

I had run out of this one and I’m glad that I finally bought some more. It’s a great morning tea and since I broke up with my boyfriend yesterday and will almost definitely never see him again, I needed something bright to cheer me up. And earl greys are my favourite anyway. I enjoy it on the second steep too.

First an experiment:
When I first heard about this tea, I thought it was a cute novelty thing but was skeptical about the jellybeans actually adding anything to the tea at all. So I bought some jellybeans, same brand they put in the tea, and steeped a cup of about 30 jellybeans alongside my cup of this tea.
You guys, it was a lot grosser looking than I thought it would be. I had bought random flavours just like they put in the tea, and it ended up a very muddy looking opaque liquid with little white bits floating(??). I was expecting basically just a cup of hot, slightly sweet water. But it actually had a much stronger flavour, slightly fruity MAYBE, just very very sweet. After a few sips it became kind of disgustingly sweet actually.
So anyway, I guess they might add something to the tea after all.

Okay so this tea:
I was sad at first that it smelled so much like Swampwater, which I couldn’t stand. But to me this is actually like a much better version of Swampwater. Maybe it’s the vanilla, it’s very creamy and nice. There’s still a tiny bit of what I didn’t like about Swampwater in there, so I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to buy a bunch of this again. But I like the rooibos base, I think there might be more of the red rooibos in this one. Pretty nice and it does seem like a spring-y tea. Also, I must be lucky, cause there were loads of jellybeans in my 25g bag! (Or am I unlucky for paying more for the jellybeans than the tea?)

I don’t mind this. It came out pretty weak so I’ll steep for longer next time, but the strawberry and ginger are actually well balanced. It’s fruity and herbal at the same time, but mostly herbal. It has a slightly medicine-y taste to it. And I know there’s hibiscus in it, but it’s not overpowering at all. I wouldn’t guess it was there if I didn’t know.
I would reach for this again if I was in the mood for a ginger tea. I have a feeling it would be good with honey, or iced as people have been suggesting.