So this one is out right now in the Splash Collection and in the Single Iced Tea sample bags; and of course I was dying to try it so I bought one of the sample pouches so I could try it ahead of time…
It’s an interesting blend of ingredients flavour wise; cinnamon, coconut, pineapple, banana, and hibiscus!? That’s a lot of things to take in. The most exciting thing for me though, aside from the banana, is the fact that this blend uses coffee leaf! I’ve been so fascinated by coffee leaf over the last year – from things like Wize Monkey’s flavoured coffee leaf to trying it in just the pure form for Gong Fu-ing from UNYTea. I also think from a social standpoint it’s VERY cool that DT is doing a coffee leaf tea (in partnership with Wize Monkey) because the impact that making tea from coffee leaf has on the community that grows it is so incredibly huge!!!
Here’s the impact page from Wize Monkey, just in case anyone is curious on all of the benefits that you’re contributing to by buying coffee leaf tea:
https://www.wizemonkey.com/pages/impact
HELL YEAH, CREATING MORE SOCIALLY CONSCIOUS CONSUMERS.
As for the taste of the blend itself!? Well, I tried mine iced because generally that’s the way teas DT releases over the summer are often intended to be consumed. It brews up a sort of dark, amberish pink colour (from the hibiscus) and the smell is very tropical fruit and cinnamon. The taste is at first a little overwhelming, and it took me a little bit to kind of settle into it and really take in what I was experiencing because there’s a lot going on.
Overall I’d desribe the flavour as very tropical, with intense but pretty balanced notes of coconut, unripe banana (still has that sort of sharp green taste to it; not so creamy), and pineapple/mango. I don’t actually taste the hibiscus at all, unless it’s just contributing to some generalized tartness coming from the fruits in the blend. The cinnamon is also quite strong, it hits me more as like a top notes that fades into this sweet, tropical fruit body. Not a lot of taste from the coffee leaf itself either; which I find tastes sort of like a green, unroasted mate?
I had a very hard time trying to figure out a way to convey overall what this one reminded me of and, until I did, I also kind of felt like it didn’t quite feel like a summer-y tea to me because of the strength of the cinnamon, which just feels a tiny touch out of place. It finally hit me though that as a whole this one really make me think of Tiki Drinks, and when I made that realization the whole blends just sort of clicked for me and I was better able to visualize how it fits in with the rest of this year’s collection.So yeah; I’m SUPER crossing my fingers that this blend does well as a whole because I’d love to see DT as a company create a lasting partnership with the communities that coffee leaf comes from so we can continue to have that positive impact and create those stable job opportunities for the people living in Nicaragua. No one should have to drop out of school at the age of twelve because your family can only find work three or four months out of the year.
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 regarding the teas, and not the company’s.
Hmm, interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever had a tea with coffee leaf in it.