Gold Rush (organic)

Sorry for all the backlogs folks! my computer decided to take a vacay without me the other day…
So this cuppa was interesting. I had no trouble drinking it, which got a little woot! from me, but the caramel was just too much. It completely overrides the white tea!
I love burnt sugar as much as the next tea lover but I love my tea more… so don’t hide it on me k?! Play nice and share the spotlight…
Oh and I got just two good steeps. The third was really iffy. I drank it only because I was thirsty.
David’s… please come out with something that revives my faith in you soon! your blends lately have been so meh for me lately. It makes me sad! :(

I picked up some of this tonight as a to-go cup. I had this almost a year ago, when it first came out, but I never bothered to pick up more as it was just too expensive in relation to how much I enjoyed it. Every once in a while, in a cup, it’s ok, though. It’s also one of those “teas” that doesn’t consist of a lot of leaf, and I can relax on the “steeping time” with the baggy; optimal for David’s Tea to-go cups!

There’s a good dose of coconut in this but the flavour is clearly dictated by the mulberries, a very strange, extremely sweet “golden yellow-white” berry. The Liqour smells like syrupy coconut.

On the bus ride back to the rented place, I couldn’t help but think this would make a very tasty “light beer”. I don’t know why, it’s not particularly malty, more a nutty and fruity honey flavour but it has something I associate with light sweet beers.

I love eating the wet leaves of this tea most of all. The mulberries and coconut still have their sweetness (I guess I could have done a second steep) but I ate everything too fast. So good! I know, I’m a strange one. There were actually a few white tea leaves this time around, which is very surprising for this blend!

A big thanks to DaisyChubb for sending me a bit of this tea.

Wow! this is really delicious.

Dry, the tea smells like coconut and berries. So, I found the flavor to be very surprising, because I don’t taste coconut or berries at the start … I taste caramel. Sweet, creamy, delicious caramel.

After a couple of sips, the coconut flavor begins to come in to focus, and the creamy sweetness of the coconut melds seamlessly with the caramel, perhaps this is why I didn’t notice the coconut at first. The mulberry adds a pleasant hint of berry flavor, with a more defined berry tone toward the finish and in the aftertaste.

A really unique, delicious tea. I’m really glad I got to try this one! Thanks again DaisyChubb! I think this one may find itself on my shopping list!

A friend of mine works near one of the DavidsTea shops in NYC and she offered to go get me things so I could try smaller amounts. Of course I still ended up where some weren’t available in smaller amounts…one in a 50g bag and one in a 2oz bag. Then this one was .6oz and the other 3 are .5oz, but now I see why from the other notes on here!

I’m really amused right now because I convinced my boyfriend to get an electric kettle so he didn’t have to wait forever to heat water for coffee, and I’m the one using it and I’m only making tea. Now I feel like I made him get it for me to use here! I hope he uses it when I’m not around…I should turn it a certain way and see if it moves at all between visits.

I love how this smells, both dry and steeped! It’s like coconut cake!

It tastes like coconut, vanilla, and caramel. I was worried I wasn’t going to like it since people said it reminded them of Secret Weapon and I hated Secret Weapon. As it cools it gets even more like cake.

I let it steep for about 12 minutes and I plan to steep it again for even longer when I finish this cup.

And of course there is nothing that tastes even remotely like white tea present. That makes two teas that I would so get again if they weren’t $11.50 and would be better suited to just leaving out the white tea :[ Especially since this one is so bulky, I’ll be curious to see how many cups I can even get out of it. Looks though like it may be good for 2 steeps so that might help slightly.

Ok, second steep time. I also just ate one of the mulberries because I’ve never had a mulberry and at this point it just tasted like a weird version of this tea. Second steep seems creamier, with a nice caramel aftertaste that’s not too strong. Still really good, but probably would not do much on a third steep especially because I think I let this steep for close to 20 min. The end of the first cup was really fruity, it surprised me.

I liked this, but was expecting more from it. It definitely has a nice creamy caramel flavour going for it. And I was expecting it to be heavy on the additions and light on the tea from others’ reviews, but I actually didn’t expect this! It was basically all mulberries with a few coconut shavings and a very few tea leaves. Something about paying 11.50 for, basically, 50 grams of dried berries with some added flavouring does not sit right with me. And paying what seems to be the “white tea” price for something that is really just honorarily a white tea is also silly. I think if this was priced as an herbal it would still be obscene, but more affordable.

It was tasty but not outstanding, and I feel ripped off so wouldn’t buy it again. While I found it underwhelming, though, the man-of-the-house volunteered that it was “really good” (as opposed to his usual “it’s good” when prompted). But the berry carnage in the Breville’s brewing basket freaked him out when I asked him to go make the next batch of tea.

One step forward, six steps back…

By which I mean I’m drinking up the last of this, but just added 6 more to my cupboard. So much for “down to 100 or less by the 7th.” Oh well. At least I’ve learned my lesson by now about buying more than sample sizes of anything first-try. (With the exception of Teaopia’s Love Spell, since I’ve never had it before, and it won’t be available soon – may as well just go for the 50g, I know it’s good.) So most of those additions to my cupboard won’t be around for long.

[ Edit: Just discovered that Love Spell is apparently one of Teaopia’s “top 20,” so they are keeping it after all.]

This one is SO good, and a definite re-purchase at some point, even though it is stupidly expensive despite having barely any tea in it. (It is pretty hard to dent my high opinion of DAVIDsTEA, but these days even I have to wince when I open my bag or tin at home and discover, say, the half a slice of dried orange I found in my tin of Mango Madness. Seriously, I paid for the weight of that? What the hell am I even going to DO with that, use it as a cocktail garnish?!)

This is so creamy – especially sweetened with honey, which always adds to or brings out creaminess in teas – and like I said, I love creaminess! Creamy coconut is really the strongest impression I get from this one. Other people have said “caramel” and I get where that’s coming from, but I don’t know if it’s the first description I would have used if I hadn’t seen other people describe this tea that way. Perhaps if you could imagine a fruity version of caramel; that’s what this tastes like. There’s a sweet fruitiness to it under the cream and coconut.

So I guess that’s the mulberries. Although, to be honest, I’ve never had a mulberry. So I’m not sure exactly what they are adding to this tea other than that fruity note.

I decided to try for two steeps of my last leaf of this, so I steeped the first cup for 5 minutes and the second cup for 9, both around 90 degrees. I honestly expected the first cup to be weak, but it really wasn’t…and in the second, if I concentrate, I actually faintly taste the Bai Mu Dan-which-barely-was.

In other news, Tea Annoyances, it really sucks when “your” bathroom in the house is also the main bathroom because you drew the short straw for bedrooms and are the only member of the household without your own bathroom…so everyone uses your bathroom to shower, have baths, shave their legs for two hours, etc. AND YOU DRINK A LOT OF TEA.

Oh man, this was good and I was so pissed that it was so good XD. It’s another heavy, expensive white blend, but it…guh. It’s amazing. It’s creamy and sweet and almost caramel-like, from what I can remember (I drank it at work while being BORED OUT OF MY SKULL). But I remember loving it. Definitely need to buy more tomorrow.

Dry Leaf Nose: Smells sweet, almost of fine bourbon and chocolate.

Liquor: Light, golden-clear colour, with a sweet and enticing aroma.

Flavour: The liquor is sweet and fragrant, with an intoxicating, full bodied bourbon note. The body of the liquor is full and satisfying.

I’ve totally taken this tea for granted. :| I grabbed a bag when it was $2/5 at Davids, along with a few spring teas I hadn’t even tried, and 2 days later it’s gone.

It’s pretty good, but OMG is it expensive. $11.50 for 50g? And this is a heavy tea with all those mulberries. Are mulberries rare? Because there’s really not a lot of white tea in here. The 4-7 minute steep time sorta gives it away – it’s basically a fruit herbal with a dash of white.

It’s so creamy and sweet and a touch fruity. I would never buy 100g, but I DID send my bf to Brentwood to see if he could grab me two more little bags. I’ll cross my fingers.

I steeped it at 4 and 7 minutes and tried it and it was weak, then I remembered some notes on here saying to steep it for 10 minutes. So I tried it and wow, that is good.
It is sweet, smooth, creamy caramel.
I would give it a 100 rating but it is so darn expensive.
I ate the mulberries after steeping and they were yummy.
I don’t think I could get a 2nd steep out of this though.
Definitely a re-buy though.

I just got back from DT with a pleasing array of teas to try out. Out of all the ones I chose, my mom liked the smell of this the most, so I thought I’d make a pot of this beauty first.

At the moment, I only have my Tea Stick with me, and seeing that this is mostly plump mulberries, I could already tell that it wasn’t going to work out, so I passed on that and dumped around 1.5 tsp of the tea into the teapot. The teapot residence services provided us here is really small so I figured after it’s done steeping, I could just split it into two mugs and nothing won’t be oversteeping.

The dry leaves, if you can even call them that, are seriously 60% mulberries, 30% coconut shreds, and 10% silver needle. So it’s barely a tea. BUT. It smells exquisite. Like a coconut cake with layers of fresh mulberries.

For the first steep, I kind of lost track, but I’m sure I steeped it for like six minutes. It tastes more caramel-like than I had imagined. And much creamier too. I would never want to taint this with any additives. One moment, it’s coconut, then the next it’s caramel, and then there’s that very subtle taste of creamy berry woven throughout everything else.

The coconut got lost with the second steep. It’s mostly creamy caramel. And that’s all there is to it.

I’m going to have to agree with several others that to be fair, the price of this tea is quite steep (no pun intended) considering the fact that this has very little actual tea leaves. But granted, I’ve paid more per gram for by far drabber, more flavour- and tea leaf-lacking teas from other places cough Teavana cough, so whatevz. This tea is so worth it in comparison.

Wow! This is so gorgeous!
The loose tea smells so fruity and sweet and like honey. Serious wow.
I spin my own yarn and silk is one of my favorite fibers to spin. I’ve never tried anything with mulberry in it before, so this should be interesting!
I decided to steep it at a lower temp than the bag said, 190 vs 200 and let it go on the longer side (~6.5 minutes (4-7 was the recommended).
This smells so sweet steeped! It’s like honey :)
The flavor is nice and subtle – I’ve been trying a lot of tea lately that I haven’t cared much for, so I was starting to think it was just me being picky or something. This one I can safely say I like. It’s super light flavored, with a creaminess that underlays it from the coconut. The more I drink this the more I like it – as it cools the flavors really come out. I want to try this iced.

Oooh I am not with everyone on my opinion of this “tea”.
I sipped at 5 minutes, it tasted like I had poured hot water on a bag of sweetened coconut. I let it steep for a full 10 minutes and it tasted the exact same.
I ate a mulberry after, ugh, just not good. Not for me. Do not want.

So next time I go to swap, someone gets a very expensive bag of mulberries haha.

This is a fairly complex tea. I got a sample of it the other day, and it was fairly meh, but my friend had it for her tea to go, and she said it was better, so tonight I made that my tea to go. It steeped for quite a long time actually, as we got it as we were leaving the mall, and it is about a 15 minute ride home. I was told that this tea could hold up to a longer brew time. I didn’t actually taste it til I got home, because we had a box of doughnuts from Timmy’s, and a tray with 4 teas (my Gold Rush, my friend’s Pink Flamingo, and her daughters’ Mango Madness and Movie Night) all on my lap on the way home. Plus, those cups are hot for a long time…and I can never sip right away without burning my tongue.

Anyhow, in the store, this tea definitely smells sweet and caramel-y, with a hint of the coconut. It looks lovely with the golden mulberries and coconut shavings. Steeped, and after 15-20 minutes, it is a little bitter. I shouldn’t really be surprised since it is a white base after all, and for this, I can’t fault anyone but myself for letting it steep for so long. I should have taken the bag out before getting into the car, but I didn’t.

But I can’t say that it is overly bitter. It isn’t bad bitter. It’s only a tad bitter. And the taste, as I said before, is pretty complex. I can taste a nutty sweetness from the mulberries and coconut. I think I lost any caramel flavours due to the steeping, but it might be layered in with the overall nutty sweetness. I think that it is interesting to see DAVIDs using white tea and coconut in this blend as they do so in Checkmate. In fact, I sorta feel like this is Checkmate’s younger sister. Both teas are mild, yet somehow complex.

I’m on the fence whether I’ll get this or not. I think I’d like to see how it is when I brew it, but also, as it cools, the sweetness is intensifying, and I think this might make a rockin’ iced tea.

I used 2 David’s Tea Perfect Spoonfuls of dry leaf for my Aqua-ovo tea tumbler. There are some very large pieces of the dry leaf so I decided to add a little bit more than the recommended 1.5 scoops.

The brewed tea smell is similar to that of Sambuca which is an anise-flavoured liqueur.

The sip is a bit sour at the start which blooms into a vanilla-like sweetness. The coconut flavour gives a heaviness near the end of the sip, trailing into the aftertaste. I’m detecting some caramel-floral tones close to the end of the sip. The flavour of the white tea is mildy present and rounds out the taste.

As the tea cools, I am getting a bit more of the mulberry taste. It gives a light fruity taste. The sweetness of this tea is quite heavy and complements the rest of the flavours. I feel like most of the sweetness is coming from the coconut. I can detect a flavour that reminds me of liqueur.

It may be worth it to try infusing this tea for a longer amount of time in the future as other reviewers have recommended.

As I went to take my first sip, the smell of coconuts was very apparent. So I was surprised to not be overwhelmed with this note with my first sip. At first I was confused at what I was tasting, and very unsure whether I was going to enjoy this tea at all. There was a very slight sourness to the tea that wasn’t bad, but I didn’t really care for. I had never tasted mulberries before, so I indulged my curiosity and picked one out of the dry tea mix for a little taste. Mmm…yummy like a fruity honey. Now is it just me, or does this tea taste better after you eat one of those little guys? I suspect that if I were to overcome my “drink it as is” stubbornness and add a touch of honey, I would probably enjoy this tea even more. But for now my hard-headedness triumphs. At least this tea helps answer a childhood question of what a Mulberry bush is. Now I just have to figure out why the weasel goes pop and my life will be complete :)

This is the first Davids Tea of the Month of 2012 that I really like! The dry leaves smell sweet and cake-y and it kind of makes me think of a cross between Mulberry Magic and Checkmate. Most of the bulk of the tea is taken up by the giant mulberries and I had to reach way to the bottom of the bag to get a decent amount of white tea in there. But it tastes creamy and bourbon-y and it’s nice and full-bodied. I’ll probably be buying some more before it disappears.

Savouring my third cup of this for the evening. I can’t wait to get my hands on some of this dry and steep it from the beginning so I can taste all the subtle creamy variations. You know, DT, I was starting to lose faith in you a little. The last few blends have been a little iffy. But you have come back strong with this blend, even if it is light on the actual tea content for the price.

It was creamy and sweet, which seems to be a tea-theme for me today. Reminded me of Check Mate with less of the chocolate flavour, but keeping the sweet coconutty creaminess.

Day 92 of my 101 days of tea.

Cuppa bought in-store.

I have to say, this is one of my favourite teas of the month in a while. It reminds me of Secret Weapon, which is one of my favourite teas ever, except less chocolatey. It’s the coconut and white tea combination. Currently enjoying a second steep, and it’s certainly just as good as the first was — the flavour is coming out a bit stronger, probably because I’ve left the bag in this time.

This is the kind of tea that benifits from the bag staying in, I think. It hasn’t produced any bad notes yet, and the flavour only seems to be improving as the bag sits in and the temperature decreases.

I might have to get more of this before the month is out……

Since this was on sale at my local DavidsTea, I picked up a couple packets. I think I need to go get more. MOAR TEA! That’ll be a nice walk tomorrow (3k each way!).

ahem

I got a scoop of tea in a bag in my mug at the store, and have refilled it about 5 times now. Using boiling water is almost too much, as the few white tea leaves do give off a lot of bitter. However, the fruit and coconut are so freaking sweet, it’s almost a nice counter point. This is an excellent work tea for me as all I need is boiling water. I have no idea what this tastes like. Coconut and berries? Kinda. Nuts and sweet fruit? That’s probably more like it. It seems vague to me, but also quite tasty.

Yes, the top of the water gets a little oily from the coconut chunks, but it’s manageable in my glass mug and cuppow lid (Make sure you tighten it a lot or it will leak!). The flavouring is quite in your face, but once the berries wake up (2nd steep) I really like it a lot. I’ll probably use the iron-shut poly bags I have for this tea, so I can get full use of it. The paper bag broke part way through the day, so I’ve been straining random chunks out with my teeth. Heh. Not my favourite.