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Adventaggedon Day 1: Tea 6/7

So this tea absolutely wins the award today for prettiest tea in the advent! I cracked open the sample and much to my surprise the tea leaf was coated in a generous amount of golden luster dust. Steeped it just made for a stunning cup of tea with large swirls of golden glitter – memorizing to watch!

It was a bit trippy to taste because it did just taste like a pretty robust and sweet English Breakfast with the typical malt and raisin notes. Delicious, for sure! However when you see something as glitzy and out there are plumes of golden glitter you kind of expect more… flavour? Maybe it’s just because most luster dust teas I’ve come across are SUPER flavoured but having that natural tasting black tea and the tasteless glitter was weird. Pleasant. But weird.

I’m now VERY excited to see what else Kiani has in store though!

Adventaggedon Day 1: Tea 5/7

Snuck this in between a few of the more indulgent tea options from today’s advent selection and that ended up being a good choice because it was bright and citrus-y with a nice playfully grassy green tea and yerba mate base combination. It’s not the type of tea I would generally keep around for myself, but I think it’s a nice twist and that preeetttyyy classic lemon green tea profile and I thought well balanced too!

Adventaggedon Day 1: Tea 4/7

This tea comes with a story.

So in our lab at work we have a large calendar on one wall across from the table/desk that I sit and work at. It’s also next to the counter by the sink where one of about three different “tea stations” are in the lab that have all the different tools and bobbles you would need to make tea for either yourself or a large tasting group.

I decided to brew up the whole sample of this tea in one go as a very large Western style teapot that could be shared among everyone in the lab this afternoon. At this time this station (near the calendar) was the only one that had a clean teapot near it in the size I wanted. So I stood there making my tea and waiting for it to steep for a good five minutes and just as I finished pouring my cup I looked up at the calendar on the wall only to realize that the photograph for December that we had just flipped to today was of this tea garden.

It felt weirdly serendipitous.

Adventaggedon Day 1: Tea 3/7

I had mixed feelings about this being the first tea in the T2 advent because it’s not very festive at all – plus I think using Geisha in the name of a tea that doesn’t have any link to Geishas is also very weird. However it’s a pretty notorious blend from T2 that I’ve wanted to try for a while!

Overall my thoughts were that it’s fine but kind of unexciting. The green tea base, while always not my favourite, is smooth and I think it works well with the strawberry note because it almost gives it a more natural slightly underripe strawberry kind of taste. Pair that with the cream flavour and it’s just a nice straight forward/no frills strawberries and cream profile which is what it’s trying to be. I just thought it was a little flat overall.

Adventaggedon Day 1: Tea 2/7

I’m amused by the fact I had two teas in today’s advent line up that had this sort of butterscotch/toffee/salted caramel kind of vibe to them.

After a day of hot tea, and since this was my last advent tea, I decided to make this one iced with a splash of cream and drink it that way. I was on the fence about doing so, but when Marika said she preferred it as it had cooled in her mug that sealed the deal for me. It’s very pleasant! Simple and straight forward too, which I also love. I get the deep earthy pu’erh while also having a defined and distinct salted caramel/toffee note that’s not too sweet but abolutely not subtle either. It’s also nice and buttery, but that’s probably especially evident because I chose to add cream.

I definitely prefer this one to DT’s Butterscotch Chai for a couple reasons – the main one being that I think Butterscotch Chai is a little too fruity. I also don’t love the spices though (but obviously you need them in a chai) and the pu’erh used here is just such a good base!

Adventaggedon Day 1: Tea 1/7

So I may have bit off more than I can chew this year. I’m doing seven advents (and one 12 days “half advent” later in the month) which is more than I’ve attempted to do before. As always, I’m going to do my absolute best to post daily reviews and to take photos on instagram as well. I didn’t miss a single tea last year so I want to hold myself to the same standard, but we shall see…

This was the first tea in my caffeine free advent from DT and I decided to steep it up as a hot latte! Nice and frothy as well, because if you’re going to make a latte the best part of that is the piles and piles of foam. It was a good choice because the creaminess of the milk sort of exaggerate the buttery quality of the tea which makes it taste a bit more authentically like butterscotch to me. It does have a bit of a fruity taste that breaks the flavour illusion, but it was a rich and indulgent midafternoon cuppa overall and certainly not a bad way to kick off this advent!

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.

So this is absolutely my favourite of the three superfood hot chocolate blends.

I kind of waxed on about the actual hot chocolate mouthfeel/texture and taste in my other notes for Loco Lucuma and Shroom Boom earlier tonight so I’ll save the repetition here and just say it’s the exact same rich cocoa flavour that is so bomb. This is the flavour, of the three, that has to most distinct and clear additional flavour though – it’s really that very decadent mint chocolate flavour you would expect it to be – and even just a tinnnyyyy bit cooling, too! Probably the flavour of the three where you’re tasting the tea addition the least – which is I guess a little bit of a con but I like the idea that I’m getting this awesome mint chocolate profile with the caffeine bump of both the cocoa and the matcha.

They’re all amazing lattes because they’re developed specifically to be made as a latte but I think this is the best one – it tastes so amazing with virtually any milk alternative but with coconut milk!? Ooh boy! That’s the alt milk I’d recommend trying this one with. So much yum! Also very good as an iced latte!

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.

So if you’re new around here then you probably don’t know that I am allergic to mushrooms of really all kinds. You also wouldn’t know that this is the fourth tea that DT has ever released with mushrooms in it and I have tried all of them.

Once.

Because I am the type of person that just needs to know what a tea is like and, because I find it very important to have an intimate understanding of the taste of every tea that DT sells (because, well, it’s my job!) I will try the teas I am allergic to exactly one time and then do my best to memorize that flavour to stash away in my own internal flavour memory bank. Just to be clear, no one at work is asking me to drink tea I’m allergic to – but it’s something I feel strongly about doing sooooo… it just happens.

So obviously this hot chocolate has mushrooms in it. In general, mushrooms like chaga and reishi (and to a lesser extent a few others) have been massively trendy in recent years for their purported wellness benefits. In fact, this isn’t even the first or second or even third mushroom infused hot chocolate powder I’ve seen before. Now, I have tasted none of the others I’ve seen so I really cannot compare at all – but the one thing I can say is that if you’re worried about this tea tasting like mushrooms I don’t think you need to be. I genuinely cannot taste mushroom at all in this tea.

Instead I get the same rich semi-sweet cocoa notes of both the other superfood hot chocolate powders and the same luxe and very smooth mouthfeel. In terms of differentiating flavours the main ones here are cinnamon and chili with a bit of a malty kind of undertone from the black tea powder in this blend. It reminds me a lot of Mexican Hot Chocolate with that cinnamon/cocoa combination but with the kick of heat from the chili. Definitely noticeable heat, though I don’t personally think it’s excessive.

It’s actually a bit of a shame personally because, were it not for the allergy factor, I think I would really enjoy the taste of this flavour. It was a good once in a lifetime latte for me, though.

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.

It’s been such a busy time at work lately that I haven’t had the brain power to really sit down and write the notes that I’ve wanted to for DT’s new hot chocolate/tea powder blends but my goal tonight was to clear ALL the tasting notes from my outstanding queue, so here we are…

If you missed it (which is fair – so much going on it the world right now) DAVIDsTEA recently released three new tea infused hot chocolate powders. These were fun to work on the development of and, in particular, I’m really proud of the fact that we managed to create something so rich and flavourful that’s both organic while also not being too sweet and that has such a pleasant texture too!

If you’re looking for the flavour out of the three options that’s the closest to being a “neutral” hot chocolate then I think this would be the one. It has the same very rich and smooth cocoa flavour that they all do, but combined with the subtle sweetness and slight fruity flavour of lucuma and then a honeyed rooibos taste that’s distinct in the undertones and finish.

You absolutely can make these hot chocolates just in water but however they were really designed and developed with the intention for them to be prepared in milk or a milk alternative. The mouthfeel is just so lush and thick that way and it’s a good balance of sweetness with the fattiness of the milk kind of helping carry that flavour without the use of heavy sugars.

Like, I know I’m hella biased here but I’m just so proud of the work we did on these teas! I’ve tasted the hot chocolate powders from companies like Blume and over the years I’ve had a lot of cocoa powder tisanes and usually they’re just rough and gritty and these are sooooo smooth!

Yeah – that’s my general rant for the Superfood Hot Chocolates. Just amazing tea infused hot chocolates that are DIVINE lattes.

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.

Not a tea I normally would have picked out for myself but I was in a meeting earlier today and a coworker brewed a large pot of it and offered me a small teacup. How can you turn down already steeped tea from a friend/coworker!? The answer is that you just can’t…

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.