Whisky White

MEH

Oh my gosh, thank you aislingoftea (or should I say Bigelow ;) ) for including some of this in our swaaaap! I’m having a tea attack, I’m overwhelmed with the thought and care that went into my package. Tearin’ up. GOSH!

I had been wanting to try this one for a while – didn’t get a chance when it was on the wall! So pumped to give it a go!

I did a nice short steep, although it could have been a wee bit shorter because I got distracted. It’s a really nice blend, I do enjoy it! We always have a giant bottle of Jack Daniels in our cupboard, so it’s nice to have a tea equivalent ;)

A little scoop of brown sugar turns it into heaven! A hot toddy! Okay I added a splash of Jack as well. hey! It’s FRIDAY ;)

Having an awesome tea day today!

Another lovely tea sample from IndigoBloom-let! Thank you Dearie!

A Scot’s got to have her Whisky don’t you think? Sooner or later, Bonnie of Stewart, Cameron, Johnstone is needin her DT Whisky White and thanks to I-Bloom up in the land of my Fathers (after leavin Scotland) in Canada, here I go.

Being somewhat of a know-it-all old person, I did not read the steeping time ahead. What for?!
Steep 1 = 4minutes YA HEARD ME RIGHT!
A bit honey gold and very flavorful. I can’t say I don’t appreciate the full flavor. It’s like a honey, ertzy banana, rye bread. If you put in a little sweetening it is more banana.
I looked at the directions online…OOPS…30-80 seconds recommended as a steep time!
Ar oh!

Second steep = 45 seconds. SHOULD BE BETTER!
But, it smells like CLOROX! ADDED 30 more seconds! BAD SMELL IS GONE!
There is a lighter color and flavor. The banana flavor is not as strong which is ok depending on if you like that sort of thing or not. The rye bread taste is also faint but still there and the honey is very light. It is just a gentler version of the over-steeped first batch. You could do this tasting side by side and see which you prefer.

What did I do next…
I could not resist the classic Whisky and Lapsang Souchong pairing.
Whisky drinkers drink this classic smoked tea till they are passed out drunk!
Having a small cup of both tea’s (one sweet and one salty and smoky) proved to
be a delicious way to enjoy this Whisky White. It knocked out the banana flavor!
See what you think?!

I’m back I mixed a little LS and Whisky White together and the Bagpipes began to play!
(If you think I’m kidding about the two, Google “Whisky and Lapsang Souchong” Winston Churchill drank this combination).

i try to not be too influenced by the reviews here on steepster. but i also enjoy reading them and taking the opinions into consideration as i sip. so i can’t help but notice how this tea does not have the highest of ratings.

and i can see why cuz it’s not exactly bold or super fruity. the davidstea website describes it as a ‘rich blend’ but it actually doesn’t seem that rich. the Bai Mu Dan is nice and even. but i barely get any peach from the cup. and i’m glad i don’t get stevia either.

i will declare that i like this tea. mostly for it’s relative simplicity. and i may brew it extra strong and drink it chilled at a party we’re having at my house tomorrow.

tea instead of whisky. because i have a trail marathon to run on saturday. a marathon that i am DRASTICALLY ill prepared for. and also i’m sitting on a tennis ball to try to relieve a muscle strain on the back of my right leg. not a bad strain, but annoying, and 26 miles will make it angry. so hopefully some of this pressure point massage should help? either that or it will bruise my leg up nicely :) hah
i’m wearing a tardis dress for the race.
hopefully it won’t be too rainy.

I don’t drink whiskey really at all. I think the closest I ever got was one time with car friends, I had some with Dr. Pepper, and I guess I liked it. After the whole thing was over, some weird dude promised me Jack Daniels the next meet up…I was like, “bro, I live in Tennessee (at the time I did), no.” I think at that point it was just like wooo drinks…I probably hate whiskey.

So I thought though that the flavor would be pretty cool with white tea. And the worst thing that happens, this doesn’t taste like bourbon at all or anything, and it’s just a peach tea.

And that’s really what I get. Peach. I like the idea of a flash steep with this one rather than the four min I believe I went with (I have since left my notebook, which I filled over 6 months with 450+ tasting notes!). That might make it a bit more interesting. There were flashes of whiskey but not enough to make it worth the name.

An expensive experiment, but hey, it’s a discontinued peach tea with stevia that I can drink, unlike Southern Belle.

At long last I am drinking this again, but this time I have a way to combat the bitterness…

I’ve been using steep.it a lot lately (if you don’t use it, you really should!) and I especially like that for white teas it actually times for 30sec. I kid you not. A timer for half a minute! Who knew! So freakin’ handy because if you’re anything like me-and there’s a small toddler depending on you to keep them alive—then you lose track of time. A lot. This website makes sure you’re steeping your tea not only for the right amount of time, but the right temperature too!

Anyways, long story short: I steeped the Whisky White according to their 30sec @ 80(ish)°C recommendation and HOLY MOSES this is a completely different tea! Not bitter or strange at all, just creamy-soda-white-tea heaven. Still no whisky taste, but then again I’m no expert on what whisky tastes like so, meh!

PLUS, I got 2 more steeps outta the leaves slightly raising the temp and time for each steep.

Oh no, I’m disapointed! This doesn’t happen very often with David’s Teas. All I can figure is that I must have done something wrong in the brewing process. What I ended up with was a weak tea that tasted slightly bitter. Not at all what I wanted or expected. Boo!

I’m going to try brewing ithis tea again before I rate it. Now, to figure out what the heck I did to ruin this by all accounts great tea. Hmmmm…

So, I’ve never actually tried whiskey so my comparison for this is not the best. But it sounds so interesting for a tea that I just had to get a sample from ne14t in our swap! I mean really, a whiskey tea. DAVIDsTEA has the wackiest ideas sometimes.

This tea is… odd. It’s kind of rich and nutty, but at the same time very light and airy because of the white base. My tastebuds are confused! It’s kind of woodsy as well and there’s a whiff of smoke in the background. You know what this is? It’s a manly tea. Some teas are light, floral and totally girlie. This tea just screams I AM A MAN TEA HEAR ME ROAR. But it’s not too much because of the white base. Certainly an interesting blend!

First of all, I need to thank Jenn for sharing some of her Whisky White with me. Thanks Jenn!

This has a strong whisky scent but the flavor of the whisky is very subtle and smooth. I can taste a barely there hint of peach and a nutty background, and the white tea is also distinguishable amid these other flavors. Quite a nice flavored white tea.

Hmm… It’s alright.
The peach gets very ..bright?.. in a way. Acidic almost? It’s not bad, but I find no whisky aspect to this.

I don’t care for whisky much anyways so I guess it works out :)

Asked for a sample of this with my last online DT order and they obliged. So happy :) My store had been out of it FOREVER (ok, for a month?), and then it went to online-only/discontinued (it seems we were misled about the online-only teas remaining available online, as they seem to be discontinuing a bunch :().

Anyways.

I don’t know how long I ended up steeping this one for; I kept smelling it and it smelled kind of like hot water, so I just left the tea ball in longer. Perhaps 6-7 minutes? I only have enough for two cups of this, so didn’t want to screw the first time up.

Steeped (and cooled a fair bit, maybe to ~35C?), the scent is of sweet caramelly…. bananas? What? Did I grab the right glass? I do have Banana Oolong right next to it… but nope, right glass, and bananas is what I’m getting. Well, it’s better than hot water!

… Ok, you know what? This one does ACTUALLY taste kind of like alcohol! I admit I doubt I’ve ever had whiskey straight, as I dislike the flavour of alcohol in general, and if I choose to drink it, it’s usually covered up with various sweet flavours, but I’m definitely getting the sense that this might be similar to how whiskey actually tastes. To me, it tastes caramelly but not really sweet, per se, and although I saw the peach pieces with my own eyes, I’m definitely thinking banana as opposed to peach. I may have oversteeped it a tad, which is causing a teeny bit of bitterness to come out, or it’s possible that the blend just tastes like that; it suits the alcohol impression well. The aftertaste is definitely white tea, and wow does it ever work in this tea to create the impression of a relaxing alcoholic beverage!

So glad I tried this one! I don’t think I’d bother picking it up again because I wouldn’t want to accidently fall in love with it and have it completely discontinued, but I am happy to know what it tastes like and not have it remain a mystery!

now here we have a novelty tea! but I love it.
The first infusion was heavy on the whisky, not letting much else come through. It was strong, and generally what I had hoped for, except that the peach was far too mild. The second infusion was even better! I could really taste the peach here and it became super smooth, almost creamy. The third infusion was more or less the same but weaker… enough so that I doubt it could have done a fourth.
Next time, I’ll try shorter infusions and see if I can get more out of it.
Either way, this one is naturally sweet, complex, drastically different between infusions, and overwhelmingly tasty!! nothing but good things to say about this one.
Oh ya, and eating the nuts/fruit afterwards is fun to! :P

As we know by now, I am from The South. Not the south as in any state in the lower half of the US, but The South. Grew up in Tennessee and went to college in Kentucky. My area’s known for not letting the civil war die (I’ve done many reenactments in my time), good manners, chivalry, and, of course, whisky. So when I heard about this tea I had to try it. I love my whisky. I have three kinds in the house now, all made in Tennessee or Kentucky. (Can you guess which three?)

I made a jug of this for the fridge as soon as my wife got home with it. I adore this tea. Like she said, it tastes like whisky without the burn. I brewed it a little weak, but have no fear! This tea and I are in for a long, happy future. It is delicious and as tempting as with was to drop a little Jack or Jim in when I first tried it this morning, I resisted. However, it is well after five now…hmmm. Nah, I don’t want to mess up the smoothness with the burn of alcohol…tonight, anyway.

Also, I drank two cups of tea last night so this could be my 400th tasting note. Holy cow!

Decided to do a mini sipdown of a handful of teas since I suddenly have an overabundance of tea that I still haven’t tried. Pretty much I wrote down all the untasted teas I have on strips of paper and tossed them in a jar, then pulled a few out. Otherwise I have a hard time deciding what I want to try.
So this was tea #1 for today, thanks to Shmiracles for the swap!

It smells fruity and just a bit flowery-ish in the bag. Brewed…I’m not really sure what to think about this. If I had to identify something, it’s got a smell kinda like overripe bananas, which is a bit odd to me, but it’s the first thing I can think of.
A fruity taste, maybe a bit nutty but there’s a taste in here that I’m not really sure how to explain. It’s all a bit mixed together and I don’t have much of a desire to keep drinking it to see if I can figure it all out. I’ve never had whisky since I don’t drink at all, so maybe the taste that I’m not able to identify is what’s supposed to taste like whisky. /shrug/ It also might be the stevia that’s been added. I’ve never had a tea with it added so I’m not sure what to expect.
Overall, I’m pretty sure I don’t like this. I certainly don’t care to finish off this sample or order this myself. It’s just not for me.

Hummm Wisky? Not that much.

First sip i’ve taken remembered me of Banana… Yep. BANANA. (Hot sip)
Mild sip really shown the little Wiskey flavor, but… Yeah that’s more a “bubble-gum/banana” feel than the alchoolic Wisky taste.
Last sip, fruity again, same as mild.

So… Buttered Rum is one of my favorite DT tea and this one is just… Good!
But, not really close of the legendary wisky feel.

I know, it’s a good tea anyway.
Love you Wisky White.

With love,
Max. (Just imagine a fancy signature.)

I don’t know why I keep brewing my whites according to the instructions given because it never turns out how it is supposed to. Seriously, does anyone have any luck with the whites done that way, and if not, why on earth don’t they change the recommendations?

Anyway, so I brewed this one up for the first time full of trepidation. I’m not a whiskey fan at all, and dry it definitely has that liquor smell. Actually it’s so strong dry it almost turns my stomach a little. But I’m determined to try every tea on that wall, so away I went.

Brewed, I was happy to note that it didn’t smell as strong. It was actually almost pleasant. I took my first sip and . . . weakness. I can’t even find notes to it because all I’m getting is a slightly sweet weak white tea in my cup.

Looks like I’m going to be playing with the brewing and seeing if I can get a solid steep.

I’m having this now, and I don’t know how I feel about it. I did this brew, sans milk, and only with a spoonful of brown sugar. I can taste the whiskey flavour for sure. The tea is a lot heavier than expected. I taste a little bitterness or dryness, though I don’t know if it is the whiskey flavour, or my poor brewing skills. I kinda lost track of time while it steeped, and I have no way of knowing if the water was the right temp. I think I need one of those thermometer timer thingies they sell at DAVIDs.

So, judgement will continue, but…I think it is good I only got about 2 servings worth of this.

Mmmm. Got to try this today. Not usually a fan of whites, but I had to try this one. Whiskey galore. Nice little smoky whiskey flavour without the sharpness of the actual alcohol, definitely could taste the peach in it as well. Very tasty.

I had been hesitant to try this one for a while, and I’m glad I finally tried it! This is one of the best white teas I’ve purchased from DT.

This was one of the first two teas I have received from my initial online order from DT. As I mentioned with Lapsang Souchong Star I am a huge fan of Whisky so this was a must try for me and well honestly I cant say it tastes like any Whisky I have ever had.

Dry this tea has a sweet peach aroma to it with a light nut undertone from the macadamia nuts, and is loaded with colorful bits of fruits and other goodies, nothing here gave me the distinct reminder of whiskey; however it also doesn’t smell bad. Steeping brings out the peach aroma a bit more but otherwise it was fairly unchanged.

The final brew is golden in color and retains it peach aroma, it has a sweet taste on the tongue that as I mentioned does not remind me of any type of whisky I have ever had. Almost reminds me of Life Long Oolong, so while it doesn’t really live up to it’s name it is a decent blend.