thlowe

This is harsh. It smells harsh and it tastes harsh. I am admittedly a DavidsTEA fanboy, but this tea is just so sharp, it’s comparable to drinking soap or perfume. I’ve read good things about their Cream of Earl Grey tea, so I think I’ll try to pick that up next time I’m in a David’s. Hopefully it will be better than this.

Picked up a 5 gram sample of this tea for a dollar on my most recent visit to David’s. Steeped for just over four minutes. Rich, yet subdued. Definitely has a forest-y taste. Has a lovely amber/golden liqueur.

edit: Tried my second cup with some agave nectar, and I’ve gotta say it kind of took away from the tea. This is one to drink black for sure.

Okay, first off I’ll just come out and say it: I love this tea. I love this tea like I love my mother. It has found it’s way into my permanent rotation, and I am extremely glad to have discovered it. Now to the actual review:

The dry leaves smelled very much like a sweet-ish chai to me, but I could definitely pick up on the citrusy scent of the orange peel! Brewing the tea, I had a pretty decent idea of what to expect, having seen many pictures of glitter & gold on instagram (yes, I check the #davidstea hashtag quite frequently. No shame!), and was slightly disappointed at the low amount of sparklies in my tea (this is probably due to my method of steeping it in a teapot – note to self: buy DT steeper!), but this disappointment quickly turned to joy upon tasting the tea: a very prominent black tea taste with the sweetness of sugar, the warming taste of cinnamon, and slight orangey undertones.

One complaint I tend to have about certain teas from David’s would be that if there’s cinnamon there’s usually too much (Cinnamon Heart) or too little (Stormy Night), but I certainly didn’t have that problem with this tea. I could definitely taste it, and it in fact was a very cinnamon-y tea, but not overpoweringly so.

I’ll start out this review by saying that this is quite possibly one of the ugliest teas I’ve ever steeped. It’s murky and brown, and reminiscent of…feces, I guess.

But if you can get past the fact that the tea looks (quite literally) like sh*t, then it’s actually rather enjoyable! While steeping, I found it smelled very strongly of chocolate and coconut, and slight vanilla undertones. I wasn’t picking up on the cinnamon or black tea at all.

After letting it steep for 6 minutes, give or take, I gave it a taste and was simultaneously surprised and, well…not surprised. It tasted exactly like it smelled! Which was not a bad thing, necessarily, as the chocolate, coconut & vanilla all blended very well with the black tea, but I was slightly disappointed at the lack of cinnamon taste.

I’ll certainly have no qualms with finishing the rest of my 50g bag, but I probably won’t buy it again. Also it may be worth noting that before the even left the container at the DT store, the chocolate had melted and hardened back up again, making this tea very clumpy & hard to measure while dry. I think I will call David’s about this in the near future.

Since I had been turned on to loose leaf teas, I began to stray away from tea bags, but I tried this one while visiting a friend and was very pleasantly surprised! I went into it with quite a cynical outlook (I thought myself quite a tea snob), but that all changed on my first sip: it started off spicy and warming, almost like a chai tea, but then the sweetness of what I assume was wither the licorice or stevia promptly set in and I could literally feel my mouth get coated by the sweetness. It was a very odd feeling that is difficult to explain, and should rather be experienced. I was shocked that nothing had been added to sweeten the tea, as the sweet aftertaste was almost overpowering (but in a good way!).

This tea served as a decent reminder to me that good tea can come in bags, and if I can figure out where to buy it then I shall definitely be stocking up very soon!