DAVIDsTEA

I generally don’t drink white tea because it tends to have less flavor than the usual green or oolong teas that I drink. This tea is very sweet and best if brewed cold. This is more of a fruit tea than a white tea though, but it’s still quite tasty!

Now that i’ve had this at home a couple times, i realise what was familiar about it – it has that same after taste, under taste that apple cider had. And while it doesn’t make me dislike the tea immediately, i know that if i had this in a larger quantity it would get old fast. Ignoring that, this has got a relatively nice berry taste and isn’t half bad. It just doesn’t have the longevity that other teas have.

Final Count: 124

i tried this one in store yesterday – it was fairly tasty but i picked up 7g to try at home as well so mini cupboard increase even though i’m not supposed to buy tea so that i can make sure this isn’t something i want to buy a larger amount of when i can finally buy teas again heh. i enjoyed this one in store…slight tang, mostly just a cup of berry goodness. Not overly sweet so yay for that as well.

Final Count: 130

i picked this one up to try yesterday as well without looking at any reviews. The verdict? this is one of the worst strawberry blacks that i’ve ever had. Seriously. it smelled amazing and tasted like nothing you’d want to try. artificial and weird. gross.

I picked this one up yesterday as well and i’m glad i did. It was a good cup to enjoy in the evening. That being said, this doesn’t call out to me like some of david’s other herbals so this sample is all i really need. It’s sweet and very much melon like…but in a pinch i’d MUCH rather have lupicia’s golden honeydew :)

The coconut creaminess here is a little heavy-handed, but I like it! The lavender makes a nice backdrop for the coconut. Overall this is a very soothing blend that’s perfect for evening sipping. Unless you dislike coconut, in which case this is most certainly not for you :-)

Painfully aware of how much of this I have left, I decided to make up another cold brew. Not as bad as I had worked it up to be, but still horribly sweet and artificial. Still a few more cups to go…

Having this cold brewed certainly did improve the taste. The artificial taste of the strawberry was toned down, though I still wouldn’t consider it at all natural tasting. I also found the various flavours blended together much better resulting in a more uniform sip. Despite the improvement, I would still say my feelings towards this tea are neutral at best. At least I know I’ll be able to get through what I have left of this relatively painlessly. My stock of teas I only really enjoy iced seems to be rapidly growing so hopefully I won’t get tired of iced tea anytime soon.

Tried this as a latte. Initially the beginning of the sip was very tea heavy with a powerful, artificial, candy-like strawberry flavour (kind of like a strawberry starburst) coming through at the end. As the cup cooled the flavours merged a bit more making the tea creamier and the strawberry less intense. While this did improve for me as the cup cooled down, I still wasn’t won over by this one. I’ll try it black as well as iced to see what I prefer for getting through the rest of what I have.

I cold-brewed this sample from Ros overnight to take to work today. I feel like I should have doubled up on the tea, or used the whole sample to cold brew, because this tea was a little light for my preferences. I did like that I could distinctly taste the prickly pear, as well as a strong addition of pineapple and the bright lemony zing of the lemongrass.

I don’t usually think upon cactus very fondly (too many memories of stepping on/sitting on/having to pull out of pet fur), but I have always been a big fan of it’s fruit. Whenever I would visit my family in New Mexico, they would always have prickly pear jam in their pantry, as well as sweet tamales with said jam and shredded coconut. It was a specialty of one of my great Aunts’. I found the fruit in a Latino grocery store once and tried it fresh, there was not too much flavor to it. But when sugar is added, it transforms into a watermelon-ish/pineapple-ish/fresh and tasty thing that I would eat on toast.

I am glad to have tried this tea, it has been in my wishlist for some time now :P I like this blend for purpose of cold brew, so maybe I need to add this tea to my rotations!

(DavidsTea 2022: 117)

2022 Sipdown 132/365!
Mastress Alita’s Sipdown Challenge April 2022: Tea with the flavour of your favourite jelly bean

I have lots of favourite jellybean flavours, but watermelon Jelly Bellies are definitely one of them! This tea isn’t necessarily watermelon, more of a melon melange, but it’s pretty tasty as an iced tea. Just the right amount of melony sweetness. Delicious.

(DavidsTea 137)

Bought this to ice so that’s how we had the first pitcher. Definitely tasted like melon, but I wanted it to be stronger, and I also found that the lack of sweetness bothered me somewhat – but I’d MUCH rather a tea be unsweetened because then I can add something if I’d like. Overall, wasn’t a huge fan of this iced; I really prefer Sour Watermelon for an iced melon tea (or maybe, Lupicia’s Melon Oolong??) I believe I may have enjoyed this hot (or warm) in the past, though.

2021 Sipdown 20/365!
(DavidsTea 51)

Very melony, this tea is pretty tasty as an iced tea. The lack of hibiscus is particularly refreshing. I’d buy this again for iced tea. Upping the rating a little bit.

Sipdown! 183/365!

DT roulette #9. I think I’ve now entered the vast majority of my DavidsTea stash into my tea spreadsheet, and it looks like I have at least 258 unique teas (multiple packages of some inflate that number a bit more, and that doesn’t count my last few days of sipdowns). Eek. However, the vast majority are <5 cups worth, and many of the larger amounts are appropriate for iced tea, which is good. Still a tad overwhelming.

Anyhow, I now know that have a second package of this lurking around, which is good because it’s actually pretty yummy. I brewed it a bit overly strong because my kettle ran out of water (lame excuse, I know), and it’s fairly sweet and kind of a tropical, generic melon sort of flavour (kind of honeydew, kind of watermelon). A bit artificial in the aftertaste, but maybe it’s because it should be diluted more (I did pop in some ice cubes, but not enough). Would buy again.

Pretty tasty; definitely honeydew, but there’s an artificial-ness to it. I’m happy with my sample and that should be it for me.

Haven’t had this iced for a while so I gave it a go. DELICIOUS! A nice, creamy raspberry/blackberry gelato feel at first which progresses into a fresh, tart raspberry taste. Enough left for one more cup which I might have iced as well :)

Wasn’t overly in the mood for something fruity tonight, but being 11pm anything caffeinated was out and all my herbals at the moment are fruity. As always, the pie vibe was warm and welcoming. More of a green/plant-y note than earlier cups (spearmint/grass?), not really sure where that’s coming from, but as this was closer to the end of my bag the leaf was much heavier on the blackberry leaves which might explain it. Still very fond of this tea.

Sadly I ended up ruining this for myself today by not properly cleaning out either my travel mug or tea pot (or both). As a result this clearly got mixed up with either the Peppermint Amour or Honey Bee from yesterday (it was hard to tell which). Needless to say this was not a good mix. It was kind of grassy and acidic. I’ll be more careful about this in the future.

Hmm…this might be the only tea from the spring collection I actually prefer hot. It’s not unpleasant iced—the flavour is actually pretty similar—but the fact that this hot still reminds me of pie makes it pretty hard to beat.

Given that I have so many other teas that I’ll pretty much ONLY drink iced, I’ll stick to having this hot. Still trying to figure out if this is one I’ll stock up on before the spring collection goes away.

Last cup for the night.

Ended up using a different infuser which seemed to yield a stronger cup. Strawberry still dominant but what arguably could be blackberry seemed to come out a bit. Pastry notes were more muted.

A little surprised by this one, simply as it wasn’t what I was expecting at all. While I thought this would be another darker berry mix like Berry Refreshing and Elderflower Spritz, this is a lot more like a strawberry rhubarb pie. The strawberry really stood out for me, which I found interesting as it’s not one of the ingredients. It also had a buttery flavour that gave the idea of pie crust. Like many similar teas, this starts off sweeter and develops a nice tartness as it cools. Really happy with this.

OK, take number two for this one. I tried using more leaves to see if the weak flavor improved at all without being over the top. It did taste better, less weak, the coconut came through much better, although it was the kind of coconut that almost felt more like it belonged in a sunscreen than in tea. And the chocolate? Yeah, not so much. It’s just not there. As I said when I first tried it, the aroma of the dry leaf and the brew is really awesome, but the taste doesn’t come close to living up to my expectations, although it’s a pleasant enough drink. That being said, my best friend’s husband LOVES the stuff. So, to each his own, I guess. I won’t be getting more of it.

The dry leaf scent of this is amazing! Super buttery, sweet, nutty, it definitely appeals to the dessert tea fanatic that I am. The brewed aroma was almost as nice, very much like a baked good. The brew was cloudy, which I never really like, but that’s not a deal breaker. The flavor was very weak, however, and considering how intense the aroma was, I was a little disappointed that there wasn’t enough of a flavor payoff. I may be able to resolve this by using more leaves next time. What flavor WAS there was very nice, nutty and sweet, although not a whole lot of chocolate was coming through. Still, I’ve got very high hopes for this and I’m looking forward to the next brew, when I’ll probably try something like 2 tsps per 8 oz.