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Late late night cuppa from earlier this week because sometimes you just need to pull out a favourite and indulge! I wish I had made a larger mug because after my first sip I had downed this cuppa in probably less than a minute. It’s just the best damn silky, creamy vanilla custard and golden apple blend out there. Always puts a smile on my face.

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.

Grabbed this one from Boba Boba’s location in the Atwater market while I was on vacation. It’s part of their year round menu but I’ve previously avoided it because I don’t particularly love jasmine. It’s very, very pretty though – made with butterfly pea flower and no dairy base. This was the perfect balance of sweet, syrupy lychee and delicately floral jasmine green tea to make for an elevated summery profile that was still playful and fun and, I mean, just look at it! Seriously, I can’t get over how much this bubble tea looks like a freaking sunset.

Tea Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/CfwRyufuhLv/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilVGDL-a4Kc

Gongfu Sipdown (1774)!

I had this on my last day of vacation and I just wanted to indulge in a good yancha and this one delivers with such a pleasantly consistent astringency and a very woody profile that reminds me of the smell of my grandfather’s woodshop; a mix of the sweeter and almost “clean” smelling freshly sanded planks of wood along with something a bit more resinous and spiced. What comes to mind in this moment is frankincense oil. This is offset but a very subtle maple-like undertone; that small bit of sweet brown that creeps into the otherwise very woodsy profile is really lovely, and adds a pleasant and almost playful new layer of complexity to this oolong!

Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cfre3Houza-/

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSD-k7W9K7Q

I had Lupicia’s Melon Oolong earlier in the week and it triggered what I like to call the “Lupicia Oolong Effect” where immediately after finishing that brew I felt like I needed to revisit and retaste all of my oolongs from Lupicia. I mean, they’re all just so damn good. This one is the perfect balance of greener floral (heady and fresh) oolong and mango mixed with sweet, ripe mango where it’s so juicy that it just dribbles down your chin when you take a bite and practically melts in your mouth. Then take that duo and mix in a hint of the more turpentine like greener mango. It’s just ALL the best mangoes in one cup of tea.

Late late night cuppa. More lavender than gelato. In fact, not really gelato at all. However, the heavy handed lavender mixed with the honeyed nutty and graham notes of the rooibos and thick liquor made for a very plush and soothing cuppa that was exactly what I needed so late in the day.

Cold Brew!

Realizing right now, in this moment, just how heavily I fixated on different melon flavoured teas over the course of this vacation…

This tastes heavily, heavily familiar to me and I think that maybe I know why but I think I’ll need to taste it a few more times in the future to be totally sure. Regardless, I thought the watermelon flavour was just phenomenal. Definitely sweet and candy like, with that Jolly Rancher edge that just tastes so good cold brewed. It’s almost got a bit more of a berry undertone to it, like strawberry, but perhaps that’s my brain imagining things because of all the goji berries that have been added to the blend (which are beautiful).

I don’t actually taste nearly as much jasmine as I expected to, and the heady florals that do come through are mostly backend undertones that merge near seamlessly with the natural floral character of the greener oolong base. In a way, that’s a relief to me. I think the combination of jasmine and watermelon is really interesting, but I would not have wanted it to overtake the melon at all and the more nuanced floral elements actually makes it come off as much more elevated of a profile than an assault of jasmine would have.

Colour me impressed!

Cold Brew!

Sadly tomorrow is the last day of my vacation, but I would also be lying if I said that I wasn’t excited to get back to work. I love my job, and it’s been hard to be outside of the loop for the last two weeks. That said, rediscovering some of the teas in my stash due to the extra time has also been great!

I sipped this one during my DnD session this past Saturday and it was just so refreshing and delightful. I can’t explain it fully, but there’s something extra satisfying about get four hits on a skeleton monster in a single round of combat and then finishing off that awesome set of dice rolls by taking a GIANT sip of sweet floral honeydew tea. Forget the cherry on top – the honeydew on top is fucking phenomenal.

Of the three kombucha flavours from Cove Kombucha that I tried, this was the one I was most skeptical about but I actually ended up enjoying it a lot! It was more limeade than it was strawberry, but both were present and actually complimented quite beautifully and made for a very bright, summery and refreshing drink with a lot of high notes. Pretty tangy and tart, but the strawberry brought some sweetness to the mix that was a needed offset. The lime sharpness worked with the natural vinegar funk of the kombucha, though I think this was actually the least vinegar-y tasting of the three flavours anyway.

I’m so used to seeing strawberry and kiwi together or cherry and lime, so this actually felt like a fun twist on those nostalgic fruity pairings as well! I’d probably reach for the Watermelon Smash over this one, but I do recommend it! It was pretty great on a sweltering hot July afternoon.

This was my least favourite of the Cove Kombucha flavours I tried…

It didn’t actually taste much like raspberry to me, and though it definitely had the acidic pucker that I would want from a lemonade it was more leaning heavily into the kombucha vinegar profile than actually tasting “lemon-y” per say. Mostly it reminded me of a muddied and vaguely citrusy apple cider vinegar drink. I actually didn’t finish it, which is pretty rare for me when it comes to kombucha (or tea in general). It just tasted a little off to me, though…

I picked up a bunch of kombucha from Cove this past week, while my mom was visiting, so that I could have something cold to drink in the evenings on the nights I was staying at her Airbnb. This was my favourite of the ones I tried. The watermelon is really apparent in the first half of the sip and it has a taste that’s a bit like a cross of the more mellow and refreshing light “watery” (pun not intended) flavours of actual melon mixed with the more sweet and sour taste of a watermelon Jolly Rancher. Equal parts natural and more ‘manufactured’…

My mom really hated this one because she said all she tasted was pickle juice, and while I think she was definitely exaggerating because of her dislike of vinegar-y flavours I have to admit that even I found the finish of this kombucha especially vinegary for a kombucha and even I tasted a little bit of a pickle-y funk. However, I actually enjoyed that aspect of the kombucha and I thought it made those front notes of watermelon a lot more interesting and dynamic.