12963 Tasting Notes
Last tea of the night!
I’m settled in my hotel room now (the first of three for the four day trip – oof!), and I needed a proper cup of something big and soothing to wind down with after this more chaotic and stressful day of travel. Since this is essentially just a slightly less crisp/cooling peppermint tea due to the rooibos, I thought it fit the bill pretty well. It’s not a favourite tea by a long shot, but it does make for a pretty agreeable hotel tea!
Especially at what is essentially 3AM for me…
Technically not an airplane tea as I actually drank this one while waiting to board. I just dumped some matcha powder in a water bottle and shook it up really good in some cold water until it dissolved. Very sweet, but also a nice candy-type blueberry flavour. Better than drinking an over priced soda or something from the Duty Free shop, that’s for sure!
Friendly reminder that I do not numerically rate DAVIDsTEA blends as I’m currently employed there and it would be an obvious conflict of interest. Any blends you see with numerical ratings were rated prior to my employment there. These reviews are a reflection of my personal thoughts and feelings regarding the teas, and not the company’s.
Airplane tea number two!
This one was a bit rockier in terms of steeping. I had kind of forgotten just how small the cups of hot water on the plane are and just hot generously Wize fills their teabags, so my steeped up cup was STRONG y’all. However, I think in the end that ended up being a good thing because the second half of the flight had me in a total slump. I ended up needing that last little bump of packed in flower caffeine!
I drank plenty of tea on the plane back in the day when I was a flight attendant. Especially on the red eyes from Seattle to Fairbanks. But I learned that the potable water is not the best quality… So I then just used the bottled water. It wont hurt you to drink it but I just wanted to give a heads up
Welp.
It has been a long day friends – I just arrived in LA after several hours at the airport and about a six hour flight. Weirdly I’m kind of not tired at all – I guess because LA is behind Montreal instead of before it.
Anyway, I continued my now tradition of bringing my tea and kettle with me and of course making tea on the plane. It was a long flight, so I ended up getting to make two teas. This was the first – I just have so much of these teabags that Vahdam gifted me, so this seemed like a good excuse to use some of them up. It’s an aggressively straight forward tisane with just turmeric and ginger. Not something I’m normally into, but actually quite appropriately soothing for the flight!
Plus, hard to poorly steep something so simple.
Grandpa Style!
This is W2T’s fifth anniversary cake. Back in 2017 I was just dipping my toes into the world of pu’erh tea so this was something I absolutely passed over, as it was very intimidating to me at the time. It’s hard to imagine exactly what kind of impression this pu’erh would have had on me back then, but experiencing it now there’s something just absolutely brilliant about it! It makes me excited for five years from now – not just to see what this tea will be like, but to also see how much will have changed in my own tea journey!
Tea Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cdl0nToubzH/
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q91pLJg5mRs&ab_channel=BlocParty
Flavors: Camphor, Red Fruits, Smoke, Stonefruit, Tobacco, Vegetal
Cold Brew!
Sipped on this rooibos earlier in the week. It’s got such a naturally sweet and clean taste with very distinct notes of hazelnuts! There’s definitely a reason, aside from the amazing story, that this is definitely the go to rooibos I recommend people who are on the fence about rooibos to try.
Tea Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cd5xJJbOjDN/
I saw this giant tulip patch in the park a few days ago and knew I would be back that way a few days later, so I planned ahead to bring this thirst quenching cold brew and a near perfect complimenting teacup to sip it in! Sometimes it pays off to have a ridiculous teaware collection because you can find the perfect piece of teaware for literally any environment…
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pftKtoSGEsg&ab_channel=EmperorX-Topic
Friendly reminder that I do not numerically rate DAVIDsTEA blends as I’m currently employed there and it would be an obvious conflict of interest. Any blends you see with numerical ratings were rated prior to my employment there. These reviews are a reflection of my personal thoughts and feelings regarding the teas, and not the company’s.
Tried this one at the same time I tried Ooya’s Original flavour.
I definitely think this is really tasty – it’s got a similar light, effervescent, and sweetly refreshing profile. Not something I would call heavy or cloying at all. The watermelon was stronger that the raspberry to me, but I got a bit more of the tartness of the raspberry in the finish.
I’m glad I had the original next to me to do that side by side though, because I don’t really taste the guayusa in this RTD at all. If I didn’t have the Original as proof that (when they want to) this company can actually highlight the natural flavours of the Guayusa in a very balanced and authentic way then I would probably have been less impressed with this company overall just based on this drink alone. It’s tasty, but almost a little too polished and commercial to be nearly as interesting/noteworthy.
At least to me personally.
I met this company at SIAL earlier this year and they were just absolutely kind and pleasant to talk with! Also, I swear they had the busiest booth out of the whole trade show – Marika and I had to wait like twenty minutes for a moment to sneak in and talk with them! It was worth it though.
I’ve tried a lot of Guayusa/Yerba Mate RTDs and they tend to range between “gross” to “kinda just fine”. This one was impressively good! I think the best part about it was that on top of just being pretty light and refreshing it was also just genuinely very well balanced. Like, equal parts an effervescent sweet and just slightly tart natural lemon/citrus flavour with that trademark “rainforest” flavour of the guayusa. A little grassy and earthy with that sweet rain/petrichor finish. I just adored how true to the flavour of the Guayusa the drink was without any of the mineral/metallic taste I often get with Guayusa RTDs. It’s also rare to see one of these trendier RTDs focused around clean energy that doesn’t shy away from tasting like the thing it’s deriving that energy from!
You could easily crush a full can of this without even thinking about it! I am definitely going to be keeping an eye on this company within the RTD space!
So I’ve been craving this tea since about Thursday, and I just could not pry the lid off the tin. It was driving me insane, but I finally managed today to get something under the rim to use as leverage and pop it off that way. I’m all for an air tight seal, but geez.
The tea is well worth the effort though because it’s satisfying that several day long craving immensely. Very, very nutty with such a distinct creamy peanut butter flavour with undertones of heavily roasted almonds and honey. It’s sweet, rich, savory, and soooo good if nuttier teas are your jam!
(Also, definitely made sure to GENTLY put the lid back in. Fingers crossed for next time.)
As always, I couldn’t resist picking up this newest kombucha flavour from Remedy! Though this lacks a little bit of that kombucha vinegar funk I crave, I think this is actually my favourite flavour from Remedy yet! It took me like 90% of the can to actually place the specific thing that the flavour was reminding me of, but it finally came to me. It’s like Smucker’s strawberry jam but fermented/bubbly. Really quite good!
