15695 Tasting Notes
I love travelling with these little cold brew packets!
This one I left to brew overnight in my little travel cup I’d brought along so that I could have something chilled and flavoured to drink our first proper morning in Vancouver. It’s a bit more of a strawberry watermelon flavour than a margarita, but those very rounded sweet jello-like notes were a pleasant hello that morning as we clamored out the door for our first day of shopping and activities.
This was the bubble tea I ordered!
I’ve been very into hawthorn as a flavour lately so when I saw that this shops Spring seasonal menu was also Hawthorn drinks I got very excited. I didn’t expect the rose to be as strong as it was, but there was a really distinct rose water note alongside the tangy yogurt base and the hawthorn and I thought it worked really well, though I could also see it being a polarizing flavour.
One of the things I like so much about hawthorn is that it’s just so dense and jammy tasting, but also simultaneously kind of tart and tangy. That was true for this drink as well, and I thought that those more bright and lively top acidity notes meshed really well with the tang and funk of the yogurt. It was interesting though because the hawthorn was coming from this almost “fruit leather” than had been blended down into the drink but not so finely that I didn’t occasionally sip up a flat piece of this chewy, rich hawthorn leather. Not as chewy or big as boba, but it did sort of give a similar sensation of forcing a break in your drinking in order to chew through it.
I liked this a lot.
That same night we ordered in pizza we also ordered bubble tea from a shop specializing in bubble tea made from rice yogurt! This was actually the flavour my mom ordered – as I get through this backlog of tasting notes, you’ll see that a theme was for sure her ordering things that I also had a curiosity about so that I could taste twice as many things during this trip. We love a parent that supports adding to your flavour memory bank!
Of the two drinks we ordered, I would call this one the less noticeably “yogurt tasting”. It was, certainly, very thick and creamy but mostly the strong and sweet notes of strawberries and bananas gave it more of a smoothie vibe. A smoothie made with yogurt, sure, but more fruit forward. It was very tasty though! You could clearly see fruity chunks that had been blended down into the base, and I was pleased that meant the flavour wasn’t derived just from powder.
We stayed at two different Air B&Bs during the trip – one in Vancouver and one in Victoria. Thankfully both locations had electric kettles, so I was able to brew tea in the cup and strainer I had brought with me. The first night in our Vancouver Air B&B we ended up ordering pizza from a restaurant named “Pizza Maru” that used a green tea/matcha infused crust for all of their pizzas. It certainly looked green, though I didn’t think it tasted like much outside of normal pizza crust.
The pizza was got was pretty interesting though – sweet potato, corn, kepwie mayo, and honey among a few other ingredients. Really cozy and fresh, and different from any other pizza I’ve tried. I had a few teabags I’d brought with for the trip, but knowing I was planning on buying a lot of tea I didn’t actually pack much with me. Thankfully, despite slim pickings that first night, I thought the warm butterscotch notes and darker earthy pu’erh base of this tea were a really fantastic pairing for this super late night pizza situation.
I picked this up at the same airport store I got my Wize drink at. They had a very large ‘local drinks’ section with a handful of kombucha companies, but this was the one that stood out to me as having the most interesting flavours.
In hindsight I wish I had picked up more of their drinks because one of my big frustrations of the trip was just how hard it was to find cool local/small batch kombucha or other tea related RTDs at any of the stops we made – several restaurants, cafes, and actually two grocery stores but just none of those stand out regional drinks I was expecting to see aside from a few soda companies. It was a small culture shock given just how prevalent all the Quebec based RTD companies are here in Montreal both in wholesale/grocery and in the restaurant scene.
As for this kombucha, I thought it was alright. Definitely tasted of both raspberry and sage, but more so the raspberry. It had what I would describe as a very yeasty and hop-like taste, to the point where I actually ended up giving the last half of my can to my mom to drink because it reminded me so much more of a sour beer than the vinegar-like sour note in most kombucha. Shockingly, as someone who self professed “hates kombucha”, she really dug it…
Since case packs of twelve are the only option when shopping online, one of the things I wanted to do in BC was taste through Wize’s newest addition to their sparkling coffee leaf line – and I didn’t have to go far to find one! In fact, as I was walking to baggage claim after getting off the plane I saw a whole row of Wize RTDs in one of the airport gift stores.
Honestly, I think this is Wize’s best RTD flavour yet – and that’s saying something because the grapefruit was really good tasting too! It was juicy, fresh and sweet – though not too sweet at all. Definitely a mix of more crisp red apple and the softer and creamier white fleshed apple that I associate more with Asian ‘apple flavoured’ things. Really well balanced, and I loved that as much as the apple note was solid I could still taste that distinct slightly earthy and green coffee leaf taste too.
I continued my tradition of on flight tea by steeping this one up on the plane during my trip to Vancouver. I normally brew these teabags in about 10-12 oz of water, but what I was served on the plane could have only been about 8 oz max. So, stronger than usual. Still, I didn’t feel like it created a less desirable cup by being overly potent. It had a slight film to the surface from, surely, melted chocolate but the deep dark chocolate and zesty orange notes were pleasant and a nice delight after being several hours into my flight. I didn’t get “scone” from this at all but as a chocolate orange it was solid IMO!
Welp, it’s about time I start cracking into my vacation’s worth of tasting note backlog since my headache has now passed…
I have a lot of tasting notes to get through tonight so my main focuses are going to just be getting everything logged and keeping stuff brief so speed/expediency. I also generally keep the timeline of my tasting notes pretty loose – not always exactly in the order I drank things. I think, though, in this case it makes sense to keep notes chronoligical because I believe that will force me to be more tight with my tasting notes. We’ll see…
Anyway; I drank this one while waiting at the airport to fly to Vancouver. Both my flight there and back got delayed by a few hours, so I was waiting longer than intended. I ended up buying a bottled water at one of those over priced airport stores and (after taking a few chugs to give myself room) just shaking the ever loving fuck out of the powder in the bottle itself. Wasn’t great, though thankfully not at all gritty. Mostly just a harsher floral and grassy note – not the smoothest taste wise. Better than just water, though!
Gongfu!
Started my morning with a more casual session of this sheng. Though it was a fairly soft tea to begin with, I feel this sheng has only gotten smoother with these few years of age. There is more body overall, but virtually no astringency unless you reaaalllyyyyy push your infusion times to their limits. The taste is sweet though predominantly vegetal; it reminds me a lot of fresh fennel bulb!! Peachy leaning stonefruit notes poke past the undertones, especially in the heart of the session. I quite enjoy how they stick to the palate like real fruit juices, lingering after each sip!!
Tea Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/CtEvUwHOy_i/
Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVDVo16SxZk
So, I got back from vacation Friday morning but, like, at 2AM though. I kind of took the whole day to just unpack and decompress a bit, mostly because I had (and still have) a splitting migraine. I did add all my newly acquired ‘vacation teas’ to the Steepster database, and I’ve had a few cups of tea as well – like this very menthol forward, crisp cup of peppermint that honestly did wonders on my head…
I have a GIANT list of all the teas I drank while on vacation, so at some point (probably very soon) I’m going to have to work through logging that – but I think I’m going to rest a little bit still in the hopes that I can buck this migraine. It was a good trip, though!
