Mango Madness

After the NYC Coffee and Tea Festival this weekend, the boyfriend and I went down to the Bleecker Street area to go to some record stores. And since we were so nearby… heh. My poor, long-suffering, non-tea-drinking boyfriend got dragged into the shop with me. My first time in the new NYC DavidsTeas! The sales people were almost absurdly chipper and friendly, greeting us the moment we walked in the door with samples. I looked around some but I’m still really on a tea-buying moratorium. Since I didn’t buy many teas at the festival I allowed myself to buy some of the prepackaged sample pouches since they were 3 for $5. This is one I picked up.

Upon opening the pouch there’s no doubt that this is mango tea, though the aroma is decidedly mango candy rather than fresh mango. I was surprised to see the steeping directions of 200°F for 5-7min because of the white tea base. I rarely steep any tea for 5 minutes unless it’s an herbal or I’m adding milk and sugar, but I took a deep breath and set the timer for 5 minutes. Steeped, it smells mango-y but also pretty orange-y, as well as some other nondescript fruits in there.

This is a super fruity tea. I wouldn’t say straight up mango as much as a tropical fruit salad. It’s sweet, it’s tart, it’s hard to tell there’s tea in it. It’s just getting tarter and tarter as it cools, and it’s a little tart for me for a non-sweetened, non-iced tea. It’s not bad really, it’s just not something I’m enjoying drinking much. Oh well, at least it was a small sample!

YUM!!!! This tastes like fruit juice, but less sugary-sweet. There’s so much fruity-sweetness going on that I’m contemplating making a little room in my cupboard for a small permanent stash of this! Actually, I might alternate between this and Tropicalia. (Checking out DT’s site…) This is a lot more expensive than Tropicalia though. Hmmmm….

For those who want more tea flavor in their… um, tea – I’d advise to not look for it here. The fruit flavors are totally masking what little tea there is in this offering. But the tangerine and pineapple chunks in this mix are HUGE!

I cold steeped this awesome bonus sample from Sil for 2 days. Thanks, Sil!!!

Tastes like peach. I don’t get much mango, I get a lot of peach. I don’t even see peach on the ingredient list!

This, like Pom Power, just seems like a complete waste of white tea. It’s far too fruit flavored and it ruins any chance to taste the base. I would rather have an herbal with these fruits than pay a premium for Bai Mu Dan to be overpowered.

But I don’t really like it. It tastes kind of soapy, but at the same time it’s like really a refreshing sort of flavor if it wasn’t for that. I’m gonna let it cool off and see if it’s better iced, but trying it just once will probably be enough for me.

Thanks for the sample, Krystaleyn!

Had this iced in-store yesterday. Yum! I have high hopes for this tea and I can’t wait to brew it properly and see how the taste gets even better. I really need to stop getting anything but herbals and iced in-store. I like to only steep my whites for 30 seconds on the first steep, this was steeped for at least 30 minutes.

It was very juicy and fruity, so very refreshing, which is exactly what I needed after four hours of wandering around the pride street fair. The mango was nice and strong, but so was the orange peel, in a not good way. I think a shorter steep time will help with that.

Once again, I was sucked in by the “new tea!” at David’s Tea. I went in to smell this and the Canada Day blend and left with a pre-filled bag of both. As a “white” (I use quotation marks because I have trouble seeing tea amongst all the other ingredients) this is one of the more expensive teas at DT – I think it was $10 for 50 g. In general I have no problem with white teas costing more but since I have trouble seeing any tea in here at all, I think this is a classic case of DT over-charging and hoping nobody notices. I bought the 32 g bag for $6.50 and feel a little ripped off by how little there is in here. There won’t be as many pots of this as I would hope for the cost, especially since they recommend 2 tsp of tea to a cup.

Cost woes aside, the smell of this dry tea is amazing. I have had a couple mango teas in my day and found none of them captured the smell or taste of mango. This one has the ripe sweet mango smell bang on. This is very exciting! Once I poured the water into the pot, I noticed a lot of little floaty bits that escaped my fine metal strainer. I know it’s picky of me, but I hate when bits make it into my cup…it keeps it steeping and generally sort of grosses me out. Minus points for cost and floaty bits, but big points for smell. Lets see how taste holds up…

The liquor is really quite yellow and honestly smells still quite a bit like mango. Maybe more mango juice than fresh mango, but that’s okay. Still doing better than my other mango teas. First sips are bright and juicy. Not necessarily mango but definite tropical fruit with an almost sharp taste. No tea flavour at all, but I’d be shocked if there was. This is actually really satisfying as a mango taste for me. If you’re not looking for tea flavour, this is a tea that I would think has a wide range of appeal. I could imagine enticing my grandmother with this one (but only if I told her it was herbal…she doesn’t like true tea to not taste like tea. If I called it a tisane, she’d be all over it). Similarly, I think my 2,3 and 6 year old cousins would love this iced.

I really like this and on a taste scale it deserves mid 80s. I don’t know that I will buy more because it’s just more expensive than I would prefer. It’ll be interesting to see if this can manage a re-steep, since tisanes aren’t so great for that usually and this might as well just be a tisane. I look forward to the adventure, though!

PS – Thank you Mother Nature for giving me a day cool enough to enjoy a hot cuppa in my (always hot) apartment without complaining! I think it would almost be worth having air conditioning so I could still have tea in the morning and at night.

Although I enjoy this tea, it’s not what I was hoping for. The first flavor to hit me is not Mango, but orange. It’s juicy and refreshing, but it’s just not the taste that I was anticipating with a name like “mango madness”.

Another sample from Jenn, thankyou!!
Wow! This is the first white tea that I’ve really enjoyed. I’m also rarely a lover a hot fruity teas and this one’s got me sold. I’m really falling for David. Again. (My boyfriend’s name is David.) My biological father’s name is David. Davids everywhere. haha

I steeped the recommended 2 teaspoons, at 200 degrees for 7 minutes. Brews to a golden liquor. I expected this to not have much flavor, as most whites I’ve tried were very light and frankly unsatisfying. But woah was I surprised! (As I have been with every David’s tea I’ve tried.) This is definitely not lacking in flavor. And it smells wonderful! Tropical paradise. Mango is hardly ever mimicked believably. And I had a delicious mango this morning, so it’s fresh in my mind and that makes me all the tougher critic of mango flavor. But hats off to David; this is great. It does taste a bit more tart than a mango, more like mangos and apples, (I’m noticing a lot of David’s teas contain apple.) I’m also loving the quite apparent tangerine flavor, and I hint a bit of plum and the taste of real strawberries, and probably a couple other tropical fruits I can’t put my finger on right now, but they all combine to produce a lovely cuppa. I added brown sugar to sweeten it up a bit since I like my mangos really ripe and sweet. This has be to quite refreshing iced. I’ve got to start trying more whites and fruity teas.

Edit
As this cools it just keeps getting yummier! I’m definitely going to have to order some of this.

I have the adorable Taryn to thank for sending me a this yummy tea. I cold steeped this lovely for two hours and it made for a very refreshing treat. This tea smells like sweet, ripe mangos dry. At first sip, I get a wonderful mango flavor that moves into a clean white tea with citrus tones. The finish is sweet and fruity. I’ve had some bad luck with bitter white teas lately, but I’m happy to report that this white is not the slightest bit bitter when cold steeped.

this is another free sample i received from DavidsTea with order.
it’s okay.
i think i’m just not a white tea gal yet. i’m sure i’ll get there someday.
(like growing from liking only wheat beers, to eventually liking sour ales)

I’m normally a huge mango fan but mango seems like one of those flavours that’s difficult for a tea company to get right. This one is…okay, though it doesn’t quite meet the mark. This one at least actually tastes like mango, although it’s a bit too tart for my liking. I was a bit surprised to see that there isn’t any hibiscus in the ingredients – it almost tastes like there is. I don’t normally sweetened white teas but I might try it with some honey or agave nectar next time to balance out the sourness.

When I bought my sample of Mango Diablo, I decided to revisit this one so I had a non-chili version to follow up with. The man of the house made it last night but I ended up drifting off on the couch before I could drink it and was barely with it enough to throw my mug in the fridge on my way to bed. So, I had a nice iced version waiting for me this morning. I’m typically too lazy to hot-brew-then-ice teas; it’s either consumed hot or cold-steeped.

It’s very in-your-face sweet, ripe mango. I see (and steep) this one as a fruit blend because any tea aspect in it is totally negligible. It’s good, and I’m convinced by the mango, and it’s nice cold. But, it’s not stellar for me. Solid but not stellar.

Had a cup of this in-store before work. We have some in the stash, but I’ve never reached for it before.

I know that white teas pop to their best effect with a steep time of less than a minute, but because I got caught up chatting with the girl at DT, I ended up steeping this for almost seven minutes (eep!). The result was delicious! But not really tea-y. The taste of the tea – which is, itself, very delicate – was totally subsumed in the mango, but the mango was very bright and sweet and citrusy and delicious.

While I enjoyed the cup, I have to say that for the price, it isn’t worth it. There is very little white tea in proportion to the fruit and other additives (which themselves are very heavy), but it’s still being charged the price for a white tea.

This one smells so deliciously fruity. But nothing like mango. More like citrus. Some of these fruity teas I’m sure are better on ice. This one almost looks like it should be a herbal there’s so much fruit and almost no white tea leaves.

There’s a lovely sweetness at the end of the sip but I’m still not sure I’m getting any mango. The more I drink the more I don’t think this is a tea for me. I’ll have to chill it before I throw in the towel.

1st smell: Fruity, but not sickingly fruity.
1st taste: Mango-ish. Can’t decide if it tastes like true mangos or not though. Been years since I’ve had the fruit.
All in all: While I enjoyed this tea alot more then the last tea (I reviewed this evening.) and would be pleased to get a 50 g bag as a gift, for the price…at $10 that’s just a wee bit steep for me. And considering my current trouble in buying from DT’s non issue.
1 last comment: I am definitely seeing why some people are comparing DT’s to Teavana’s….yes I am still a Teavana fan;) I just find it interesting that DT’s is overloading their stock with bits of fruit like Teavana’s. Not a bad thing or good thing…just commentary.

Had this baby iced this morning. The scent from the bag is freakin’ splendid. So much mango.
I was a little disappointed to see so little tea in the base.
So I scooped out some scoops that had lots of tea & then threw in a few chuncks of the fruit.
It’s so mango-ey, like eating a real juicy mango. It did lack the white tea base flavour (which is fine by me), but I did pay the white tea price so I would have enjoyed a bit more white tea in it.

Thanks to tattooed_tea for sending me a sample of this!

This tea has HUGE chunks of orange, pineapple, and mango, however, there didn’t appear to be all that much tea in the mix. The scent is very fruity and tropical.

The first steep was wonderfully refreshing. I was worried that steeping a white tea at 200F for 5 minutes would result in a bitter disaster, but luckily I was wrong! I could taste the mango and pineapple the most, but I also got hints of peach (which doesn’t appear to be an ingredient in this blend). It tasted more like drinking an herbal than a white tea, which seems a bit like a waste.

I let the second steep go for 10 minutes at 200F. After a few sips, I determined that it tasted very similar to the first steep so I decided to let it cool down to room temperature to see what it would taste like cold. Mmm, mmm, mmm! I could taste a little bit more of the tea and the pineapple became the dominant fruit flavor. I would love to try this as a proper iced tea.

As an experiment, I steeped it a 3rd time for 15 minutes at 200F. I definitely get more white tea from the flavor. There is not much fruitiness left to the taste. For the first time I can taste the orange, but it is very faint.

I would love to make a pitcher of iced tea by combining the first three steeps. It would definitely be a more economical way of enjoying this as an iced tea.

This wasn’t a favourite for me – I wanted to try it because I really like mango but after checking the ingredients list and not actually seeing much mango there I was wary. Should have trusted my instincts!!!
In the bag, this tea does smell softly fruity and kinda nice, but it’s more like bubblegum than mango to me. After steeping it hot a few times and using different water temps/amounts of tea/etc, it just always smelled kind of like it’s gone bad.
I’ve tried steeping it with room temp water, cool water, steeping for less than a minute up to the recommended steeping times, pretty much everything I could think of! But it just doesn’t work for me. That said, I still recommend others to try it out if it’s something they think they’d be into. For the price, you do get a fair amount of tea, although there are lots of big orange slices, etc in there too.

I have to adjust my rating on Luscious Watermelon I think, because this tea just stole my heart.
I can’t believe I hadn’t tried this tea yet. It is AMAZING. (Iced in store)

Incredibly fruity and juicy, I’m getting lots of ripe mangoes and a fuzzy peach sort of after taste, which I am loving. The only bad thing is that I haven’t tried it until now, when summer is reaching it’s bitter end. le Sigh.

This tea is excellent. It’s more orange-peachy than mango, really, but oh so tasty. A bit dry and not overly sweet. Downsides: big chunks of fruit so it’s one of those ‘watch what you’re steeping’ teas so you can balance the flavours and it’s also gonna run out SOON because of those big chunks (2tsp/steep). Awww. :(

(ETA: This resteeped really well! 9mins, same temp.)

Mango Madness cold-steeped!

The citrus comes out quite a bit with a hint of peachyness at the end. Very refreshing! Wheres the mango? I’m at the end of this bag of tea so maybe I’m stuck with mostly citrus peels, booooo!