Tina S.

I am so glad that I only bought enough of this for one pot. It smelled too much like Bubbly for me to trust it, and damn was I right. This tea is like pineapple cheap champagne. It may be great for the wallet but your taste buds will regret every sip. I ended up dumping the pot after I tried it both hot and iced and couldn’t handle more than a couple sips either way.

I got this one as a free sample with my first order from Capital Teas. (If you haven’t tried them, their customer service was AMAZING!). My first try I tried while half asleep at six am on a Saturday . . . and forgot to shake the bag so I got all the light ingredients and no mate. Determined I gave it another shot tonight. This time I did a double strong and made sure I got some of the heavy!

The tea itself is good quality, and a really intriguing blend. I’m not a fan at all of roasted mate, and am picky about my chai blends, so I was a little afraid of what I was getting into. But free tea, right? I was pleasantly surprised on first sip. The mate is definitely there and makes a lovely base for the spice blend. The roast is mild and if anything adds a uniqueness to the otherwise unmemorable chai flavours. If you’re a fan of roasted mate and chai, this is a must try. Me, I definitely won’t mind finishing it up but I probably won’t be rebuying it, especially at seven bucks an ounce.

Hot I’m not a fan, but this one is lovely cold steeped. Dupeable as hell, though, so I really don’t have much to say about it.

No notes yet.

Meh. I like spiced teas, I like mandarin teas. But I wasn’t overwhelmed by this one. It needs more spice, or more orange. Even maybe more oolong flavour. I feel like they sacrificed quality to try and please everyone. Meh.

This is a pretty stereotypical Teavana tea, but more on the drinkable scale. Straight its tart, as it should be with that many cranberries in it. I’m not one for tart drinks so I added a half teaspoon of sugar and that made it actually fairly enjoyable. I won’t be stocking up on it, but if a friend offered it to me I wouldn’t say no.

Wait, there’s supposed to be strawberries in this? I didn’t get that at ALL. I ended up buying a bit of this on boxing day for a friend, who then told me the next day she’d bought 500g of it on her own. So I figured I might as well give it a try . . . meh. This tastes like a wannabe hot chocolate. Nothing to write home about, but nothing to complain about either. Kind of like the music charts right now, to be honest.

Am pretty glad I only got a small amount of this one. David doesn’t do pu’erh to my taste so I went into this tea with trepidation . . . and I was right, but for different reasons. Normally all I get from their pu’erh is fish and count me shocked to discover that I didn’t this time, dry or brewed. I love how this tea smells in the bag, all fruity and delish. But brewed its just too dark of a pu’erh for me and the more I sip the more I’ve decided I really can’t finish the cup.

I can’t help but feel that this tea is trying to be something amazing, but fails. Maybe it should take lessons from The Tea Haus’s Lime Fizz or even the similar version from Tealish. The ginger is here, but the rest of the flavours are subpar, and even the ginger doesn’t have the pop the other two flavours do. I can see why this one got discontinued.

I love when a pu’erh is clearly a pu’erh and yet still flavoured. This one is a great example of that. The peach is very much an undertone, so much so that if the tea cools it fades almost entirely, but it works beautifully with the pu’erh’s richness. There’s no fishiness here, just a beautifully flavoured cup of tea that any pu’erh lover would cherish.

Yawn. Berries and hibiscus. I feel like Teavana’s done this a million times over. The white tea is visible (tea, actually visible in a Teavana blend!) however its flavour is completely overpowered by the hibiscus and tart berries. I tried adding sugar to see if this was salvageable or unique once sweetened (like some of Teavana’s are), but nope, it’s a wash. If I wanted to drink tart and expensive, I wouldn’t be doing it in a tea.

I have a soft spot for this one. Three Wishes bills itself as a black, but everytime I have it I remember how it actually tastes more like a beautiful peachy green, with a bit more body than a green usually has. Hot or cold I always enjoy it, as long as I brew it properly. Even though Davids has it as a brew at boil, I like to do it around 85-90. This brings out the peach and keeps it from being overpowered by a flavour of overbrewed black. I don’t know anyone who counts this in their favourites at Davids, which is a shame. It really deserves more fanfare than it gets.

I tried this tea over the holiday 2011 season and hated it. So colour me surprised when I tried it again this season and ended up buying an entire tin. It isn’t my favourite black tea, or even my favourite mint tea, but it is a mellow vanilla mint tea that is light enough for me to be able to take it to work without overpowering the office with the scent of my tea. I’m looking forward to try this blended with Cocomint Cream . . I suspect that they’ll be amazing in a latte together.

Its been ages since I brewed this one, so this afternoon I had multiple cups. I love this one because while there is definitely a great black base, the peach flavour is there and strong. Peach is one of my favourite fruit flavours and I find it really hard to find done well in a tea, so this tea has a special place in my heart. It’s actually the only bagged tea I keep in stock here on a consistent basis, I love it that much!

After all the heavy teas of Christmas spices, I’ve started leaning to lighter fruit teas. This one was a great choice that hit exactly the right spot. I’m not sold on the scent of it dry, sometimes when I open the tin it overwhelms me a bit too much. As soon as I get past that, though, I steep it up and fall in love all over again with the first sips. Sweet and fruity without being overpowering, I like this one a lot.

I’m a sucker for a quality genmaicha, so when I found this one at 75% off last week I couldn’t leave it behind. Today I finally broke into it, and mmmm, I’m glad I got some. I did my first steep as per Teavana’s instructions, and while it was nice, it wasn’t that amazing flavour I’d been hoping to find. Determined, I did a second steep of the leaves at 85C for 75 seconds. This cup now is exactly the flavour I’d been hoping for. The rich greens flavoured gyokuro compliments the genmaicha deliciously, making it a nutty buttery brew of awesome. I’m hoping now I can get a third steep out of this one now before bed!

I hadn’t had this one in ages, so now that I’m trying to dig through the collection I pulled it from the back and dived into the pot. It’s still a favourite of mine, as I remembered with first sips. Straight, the flavour is light and a lovely blend, with the tea flavour dominating, hints of lemon and cream teasing in the background. After about half of the pot I added a small amount of sugar, and this is when the lemon blossoms, coming out to the forefront.

I react to some whites badly, and this one has none of those negative effects. It’s a quality tea blend, and an amazingly great price for it.

I got a sample of this one from a friend. Tonight I was craving something new and white, so out it came and into the pot. Dry it smells amazing, all peach and pear and just the type of scent I adore and that almost always lures me into buying a tea.

Brewed, this tea loses so much. There wasn’t nearly as strong of a scent, either of tea or of fruit. Taste wise, when sipped straight, there was very little flavour here. I could definitely taste the tea itself, however it wasn’t anything spectacular. Knowing that Teavana’s teas usually work better with sweetener, I added a little sugar. Still, blah, I tried a little more. Here I finally found the fruit flavour, but it was still understated and extremely dupeable. Overall this one is pretty unmemorable, and I can definitely understand why it was discontinued.

Not a bad tea, but why did they have to add the chocolate? My dream pie definitely is more whipped cream and less chocolate based. The banana notes are lovely and as a latte it blends up well, but I’m not going to be restocking. I’m kind of getting tired of most chocolate teas, especially those from Davids, and this one isn’t anywhere near as good as Read My Lips or Cookie Dough. So farewell, my dream pie. I hope to meet you in earnest one day.

Of course I finally figure out the best brewing on this one when its my last cup of it. When brewed at 85 for 1.5 minutes, its this amazingly lovely vanilla black. I sweetened it with Irish Creme agave and BAM, it was my favourite cup of the night. I may have to get more afterall!

Apparently a year means my tastes have totally flipflopped. Last year I tried this one and loved it, while totally disliking Saigon Chai (also from Davids). Now it is completely reverse. I got a bunch of chais to try and find the one that’ll get me through the winter and I’m pretty sure this one is not a strong candidate. I’m on a total latte kick and while this one definitely is strong enough to handle the milk, I didn’t find myself craving a second mug like I do with some of my other chais. Lowering the rating accordingly.

Also for those of you on twitter, I recently started up a feed over there for what I’m drinking. I don’t always get a chance to review but I find it fun to see what others are drinking and thought other people might be the same!

https://twitter.com/Sipofthemoment/

My first impression of this one was meh. But the girls told me to try it as a latte and BAM, there’s my cookie dough. As a slightly sweetened latte it tastes exactly like the raw chocolate chip dough that Pillsbury sells in their tubes. I was really hoping I didn’t have to stock up on any of this seasons but now . . . . I’m doomed.

The girls at my store when I got this today said it was hands down the favourite of the staff from this winter collection. But one girl had a caveat, even though she liked it she got a Bravissimo flavour from it. Curious, this was my first tea to try when I got home with my new hoard.

Dry, this smells exactly like its name, coconut with spearmint and a bit of a creamy undertone. Like mint chip ice cream. Sounds delicious, right? I was definitely eager to sip in.

After brew, my first sips? Definitely Bravissimo. I had to go back and check the ingredients to see if there was anise or fennel or even lemongrass in here. Not seeing any of the above, I determinedly kept sipping. As my cup cooled the mint came out more and the fennel-like aspects fell to the background. It isn’t my favourite tea, but I wouldn’t hesitate to offer it to a mint ice cream lover, either. Even after brewing that’s the dominant smell of both the tea and the soaked leaves.

How have I not reviewed this before? I could have sworn I had. Anyways . . .

Hot? This sucker is cherry pie fresh from the oven. Especially with a couple drops of agave. I still haven’t figured out how I can love a tea so based with hibiscus this much, but even when I ran out it wasn’t long before I was restocking. I’ve had it iced as well, and it is lovely, but for me this one is meant to be hot. And with pie. Dang, now I want pie.