DAVIDsTEA

A big Thank you to Krystaleyn for sending me this and many other nice samples!
Having this as my morning cup today.
Very bright and fruity, tart, natural flavor – not artificial which is pleasant. I think I may add a touch of sugar in the raw when I refill my cup but its very nice as is.
Thank you Krystaleyn!

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.

It was pretty hard to measure out this tea as the leaves and pine needles wouldn’t fit in my scoop, so I ended up guesstimating the correct amount. I don’t see any tinges of pink in the steeped tea, but then there weren’t too many sumac berries that I could see in the blend to begin with.

It’s rather unfortunate that this tea tastes mostly like watery Pepto Bismol – not surprising I guess since PB is flavoured with wintergreen. So it isn’t the poor plant’s fault that its flavour immediately brings stomach medicine to mind, I gues,s but it does make it harder to enjoy this blend.

I tried making this cold, but it still is just so gross. It just tastes like a really bad, cheap alcohol drink. If the stevia and/or the yogurt drops just weren’t here this might not be so horrible. I don’t mind stevia most of the time but it just does not work in this tea.

I’m not even sure why I grabbed this tea since I’ve been making peach this and that all day and now it’s ruined the good taste of peach I had. I’ve made a syrup for soda and a peach rosemary jam so far, and next up is jalapeno and peach.

Onto the swap list this goes, and into the sink the rest of the glass goes.

I can’t sleep because my sleep schedule is all messed up from this weekend’s Formula 1 activities. I was up until about 7:15 this morning thanks to the race starting at 4am AND having an hour rain delay after just 9 laps. Blah.

As a Georgia resident, I figured I had to get this tea at some point. I’ve had plenty of peach iced tea, because let’s face it, peach flavored black tea is fantastic.

In the bag it smells very funky…it smells a bit like a bad alcoholic drink. Around 3 minutes into the steep, the yogurt chips start leaving weird bits on the top of the tea. I really don’t understand the yogurt chips for this aesthetically displeasing reason.

Steeped, it smells like peach and I still get that alcohol smell. I am trying to recall if I ever had a bad night with some kind of peach drink and that’s the reason I keep getting that smell, but nothing is popping up. Or it’s the stevia, this is the first time I’ve ever had something with it so I don’t really know what it would smell like.

It tastes absolutely awful at first, like something burnt, and then right when I want to regret taking a sip, there’s a nice sweet peach taste. I think I’m going to let it sit and cool off and try it at least lukewarm before I throw it in a glass with ice instead.

So far, you are not much of a southern belle, Southern Belle.

my husband loves this tea. he’s a big fan of mint teas. it’s subtle but not overwhelming.

Sampled a nugget of this in-store, but it was especially bitter. Reminded me of Mango Madness… bitter, bitter mango. My little girl enjoyed it though and drank the rest of my sample for me.

Dry Leaf Nose: Smells like chocolate ice cream!

Liquor: Golden-brown colour with a definite ice cream aroma.

Flavour: This tastes like chocolate ice cream, with background notes of black tea.

I’m still not sold on pu’erh, so I thought that this one would be a good tea to re-dip my toe into the kettle water with. Dry, I get no fishy smell, instead I get an earth-balanced coconut. This got my hopes up since it is the fishy that really has turned me off in the past.

I really wanted to avoid the fishy, so I rinsed the leaves in cold water for a bit before brewing. It definitely helped since I didn’t get fishy at all (yay!!). The tea itself has lovely notes of coconut and a deep earthy flavour. In reading the other tasting notes I see that this is a mild pu’erh, but I still could definitely predominately taste the notes that make it such a specific type of tea. I’m not rating this one though because I’m not sure yet that pu’erhs are for me. This is definitely one of the best pu’erhs I’ve had from David’s, but I still didn’t really love it.

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 had a bit of a sad day yesterday, so I hoped my first cup of jolly jellybean would bring some happiness. I put the recommended 2 scoops into the steeper, and had 3 jelly beans hiding in the scoops! Yay for getting a good bag! It smelled fantastic as it was brewing, a nice sweet jelly bean smell. The tea streamed out of the steeper and into my double walled tea glass (the best way to use the steeper is with glass, it makes it that much more enjoyable, promise!), and the tea was a nice earthy orange. So expectations were high.
After the whole glass, I was a left a bit wanting. It tastes nice, but I had that first glass naked and I think it could really benefit from a good dollop of agave. Will try again sweetened before rating.

In the past, I have hated this tea. It wasn’t my thing and I only kept it around for my husband. But today I revisited it and I’m very glad I did. It is sweet and fruity but also nutty and it’s not too overpowering.
I love the base of this one as it’s sweet and only very lightly grassy. So delicious. I’m going very happy with this one.

first iced tea of the year! :) Mangue Demente!

I bought this one sometime last year and after trying it a couple of times, I realized that I don’t care for walnuts that much. So I ended up giving it away to my coworker who fell in love with it. I didn’t think I would ever have it in my collection again after that… that was, until a few weeks ago when I went to Davidstea in London with my husband.
My husband has been amazingly understanding and supportive of my love for tea. He is patient with me when I tell him about more teas that I love and want to try and when I have to rearrange the cupboard for the fifth time/twentieth time to make it all fit. So when I asked him if we could go to Davidstea on the way home from seeing his family, he said absolutely. I got a bunch of small amounts of the spring collection, as he looked around. He found the glass noble travel mug and decided to buy it, which surprised me only ‘cause he doesn’t drink much tea to begin with… and by much, he doesn’t usually drink tea at all.
When we were about to leave, the lady helping us asked if we wanted any tea to go. I got an iced Pow Power, which was amazing, and he decided to get a hot Toasted Walnut, which again, surprised me, but was happy to see him trying something different.
He LOVED it. We ended up buying 100g of it for him online a few days after we got home and he just made his own cup of it this morning (we just got the order yesterday). So for that reason alone, I will keep this one in the cupboard for him to enjoy. :)
And while we were waiting for the tea to come in, he tried all sorts of other teas and have a few others that he loves too! I’m very excited to see him enjoying tea.

Dry Leaf Nose: Intense tangerine with a slight toasty note in the finish.

Liquor: Clear, golden-green liquor with tangerine and delicious green tea aromas.

Flavour: This tea is the perfect balance of citrus and green tea and citrus, with an added toasty note.

Dry Leaf Nose: Fragrant orange aroma with an earthy pu’erh background.

Liquor: Clear, orange-brown colour with an earthy, orangey aroma.

Flavour: Pu’erh is the prevalent flavour note, with an earthy quality that brings out the orange and hibiscus as well.