15678 Tasting Notes
Sipped on mid last week, as a Western style cup. It was so rich and chocolate forward that it was hard to think of anything else besides that slightly bitter (but still very pleasant) fudge quality, though some sips had slight hints of malt and bread and a couple reminded me slightly of roasted peanuts.
I think this is probably my least favourite hojicha blend that I’ve tried for Deb so far. The hojicha itself is so lovely with toasty roasty popcorn flavours – sans butter. The thing that detracts is the apple note itself. It’s not unpleasant, but it just taste very flat and a bit of bordering on stale dehydrated apple slices. Just lacking any life to the aroma or flavour. I think I need to try this was something like agave or honey – maybe the sweetness will carry the flavour enough to give it just enough sparkle to make this a little more appetizing to me.
Cold Brew!
Usually I drink this tea hot, but I had a particular craving for something crisp and cool on the afternoon I brewed this up. It definitely delivered. This method draws out a lot of those cooling camphor/menthol notes from the mint and cardamom and it really exaggerates that sensation of fresh mountain air that inspired this tea. The ginger and black pepper also seemed a little lighter, which made the mint more of a focal point without totally sacrificing the depth that those ingredients add to the blend.
I will definitely have to remember that this works so well as a cold brew for future times drinking it – I feel like it was so refreshing that I practically chugged the 24 ounces I’d infused!
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.
Grandpa Style!
It was so, so cold last week and I’m sure that heavily influenced just how much I found myself craving shou – especially in the mid afternoons. I brewed this one long and strong for a super thick, rich cup with all that cozy earthy molasses goodness! It was a very, very good desk mate for the afternoon.
Tea Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/CnSfyaHOjfm/
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4-xYk7rado
Brutaliteas (somewhat) recently restocked this fan favourite blend, so that of course meant that Marika restocked it as well. It’s one of her favourites… and because she was already placing an order I decided to add in a 2 oz bag for myself as well because I was getting low on it too!
Near the end of last week I had a few back to back days of little to no sleep and, while I wasn’t feeling too out of it in a lot of the ways I normally am when that happens, I was having A LOT of migraines due to lack of sleep. So I was in physical pain versus lower cognitive capacity. It slowed down my tea drinking a lot because I just didn’t want to do anything…
I had this as a mug of tea at my desk though during one of the mornings where I was really struggling and it was the perfect balance of silky, buttery milk oolong and sweet fresh violets. It made me feel very relaxed, which I definitely think I needed. Though it didn’t get rid of the headache, I was in a much calmer mental state and I think that probably helped it from getting worse.
Tea Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/CnVNKLOuqHR/
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQwiUfB11jE
Gongfu!
Steeping up a pretty casual session with one of these minis! This is my first time trying this black tea and it’s pretty close to W2T’s site description; super sweet and syrupy, especially in the front half each steep in the earlier portion of the session. I find the deep garnet coloured liquor it produces so mesmerizing. Perhaps it’s subconsciously creating some suggestion bias, but it feels super apt for the coating, bright notes of sweet grenadine that I get in the fleeting top notes of most infusions before the profile settles into more of the spun sugar, chocolate, and malt flavours that better define the session. The aftertaste is particularly intriguing as it’s the least sweet part of the tea. It’s hard to put my finger on exactly what the tasting note is, but it’s unlike anything else in the session.
Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/CnXnIGguhV6/
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F39ts57OcRo
Gongfu!
Dipped into this sample yesterday morning! The most prominent note of the whole session is a really well defined note of semi-sweet dried apricots. It’s very nostalgic for me, as it reminds me of the large plastic tub of them that my grandma used to keep in her kitchen pantry as a snack. This flavour is supported by tasting notes of cucumber skins, hot summer hay, and silky cocoa butter. It’s a strange mix of flavours, but it’s quite beautiful all interwoven together. I especially love the lingering cream and stonefruit notes on the tip of my tongue after each steep! I always feel bad for neglecting my white tea samples, especially because I do enjoy white tea quite a bit – they’re just not something I drink quite as habitually as other tea types. The trade mark is that drinking them less frequently does make moments like this feel a little more special!
Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/CnZ6m2AuJOH/
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecLO9ieiX4s
Gongfu Sipdown (2058)!
Sipping down the last of this sample that that was gifted to me by Togo. It’s such a deliciously robust tea just packed with so many intense tasting notes I love. Clove cigarettes, incense, cinnamon, petrichor, rain-soaked potting soil, beets, decaying wood, resinous pine sap, and so much camphor. Really just an explosion of forest flavours and spices, and how can you go wrong with that? I haven’t checked if this is still available on Yunnan Sourcing (and I’m trying to order less tea this year overall), but this is the kind of tea I would buy in bulk in a heart beat!
Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cnc0p-zO_nZ/
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJG8Rax1PVo
So Marika loved this tea so much that she named it one of her top teas of 2022 on our most recent Geek Steep episode – because of that I knew I had to prioritize tasting it, to see if I agreed…
What I will say is that, aesthetically, I think this is one of Deb’s best blends. The contrast of the green tea with those bright red fruit pieces and the florals is breathtaking, and I kind of want to just stare at it all day. It also smells really good. Very raspberry forward but bright, fresh and floral! Mouth watering.
In terms of taste… I think I’m whelmed!? Not over or under. The combination of sweet raspberry and really juicy, floral lychee works spectacularly. What I love is that it’s not really dense and thick enough to be jammy or so sweet as to read as candy, but it’s definitely got some kind of extra “oomph” to it – and both flavours really pop on the more medium bodied grassy base.
The macaron comparison loses me though. Just like the Mango Passionfruit Eclair, this doesn’t taste like a baked good. It’s too fresh! Too lively! Lacking those creamy, buttery, or maillard notes that would sell the comparison or, in this case, the sweet subtle nuttiness that most macarons have due to the almond flour. I hate that just tacking on an evocative pastry to the end of a fruity blend seems to be a trend that Deb is leaning into. It’s just so unnecessary when the tea would be a perfectly delicious blend as just a fruit tea, instead of setting up an expectation of baked notes. Boo.
Waaayyy overshot the amount of tea leaf on this cup so the oolong was especially tannic and grassy, but underneath that coarse taste and texture was a spectacular jammy apricot note just begging to be noticed and loved. If my tea leaf measurements had been better I think the combo of the floral elements of this oolong with this apricot note would have been a total winner. What happened, though, was that I just poorly under leafed a TGY gongfu session earlier in the morning so I think I was (subconciously) overcompensating in my eyeballing…
So much self sabotage with the oolongs lately!
I find that getting the right amount of leaf in a cup, is one of the bigger challenges in my tea tasting. It is such an empirical process! I tend to weigh out my leaf, until I am very experienced with a particular variety at which point I can eyeball it. As you are very experienced, Ros, I am wondering what your process is. Do you weigh it? Spoon it? Or just eyeball it? Do you use some particular guideline? Or is it pure instinct?
I feel like I’ve gone through pretty much every process you can think of at one point in time, haha. I used to very, very religiously weigh out all of my teas – straight, flavoured, you name name. Then I gradually switched back to weighing for straight and spoons for Western cups/flavoured/etc. Now I pretty much exclusively just eyeball it. I think, in part, it’s because I got familiar enough with the weights to not need the scale as much and also in part because focusing so heavily on precision was taking some of the enjoyment out of drinking the tea – it made it feel a bit more like a task. I still weigh/measure everything out when I’m working because in the lab precision is very important – but the moment a tea is for me it’s just whatever instinctively goes in the cup/gaiwan/part or what “looks right”. Long answer, but hopefully that helps!
Great explanation, thanks!
