15752 Tasting Notes
Adventaggedon Day 8 – Tea 1/6
Another Vahdam blend that I actually already owned but had not tried. I put it off for most of the day but eventually made myself a cup right before the end of the work day. Not surprisingly, it’s not really my thing – it’s a pretty straight forward blend with lots of the two titular spices and both actually taste nice/good quality. I just… don’t love turmeric or ginger very much…
At first I felt like the flavour was majority ginger, but an earthy and spicy ginger with those notes that tickle the back of your throat. However, as it cooled the turmeric really came to the forefront. I need to stop at the grocery store on my way home from work tomorrow because I feel like I could have really improved my experience with this tisane by trying it with coconut milk – I’ll all tapped out of milk/milk alternatives at the moment though…
Advent Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/CIjkTExg-d5/
Adventaggedon Day 7 – Tea 6/6
Another from today that was… fine.
I had it on my commute in to work with some cream added in, and the taste was okay but it wasn’t anything special. This was especially true for the dry leaf aroma, but also a bit for the steeped tea – it has that sort of “pickle-y” quality that happens when you get just the right (or, well, wrong) combination of cinnamon, ginger, and clove.
I feel like I wouldn’t have minded this regularly, but I just recently had two other really nice/high quality masala chais from Vahdam and it just seems unfair to ask this blend to compete with those blends…
Advent Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/CIgyLwTgXrz/
Adventaggedon Day 7 – Tea 5/6
Another tea that it looks like I’ve enjoyed in the past that I was kind of underwhelmed by today – and once again it was because I thought the flavour was really thin/flat. More than I remembered it being. I can’t help but skeptically wonder if the amount of tea leaf in this year’s sachets was slightly reduced to cut costs. Or, possibly more likely, I’m just getting a poor mix of ingredients in a lot of my sachets this year…
Anyway, it was a fine cup but not a memorable one. Apple-y with some mild mulling spices like cinnamon and clove. I wanted more sweetness from the apple and more oomph from the spice. Just a bit of backbone in any regard, really. I even left the teabag in to steep super strong/potent but it just never got there.
Advent Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/CIgyLwTgXrz/
Adventaggedon Day 7 – Tea 4/6
So, I actually already owned this tea but I hadn’t worked up the nerve to try it yet because the ingredients list does not seem very Roswell friendly. It was the last tea I made today because I just kept putting it off during the course of the morning…
It’s definitely not my jam – and we’re just gonna completely ignore the “Detox” element of the name because that’s also DEEPLY not my vibe and I don’t want to put any mental energy right now into discussing all the problems I have with Detox marketing. So, with that aside, it’s just such an insane stevia bomb.
Like, I’ve discussed this before but I have a pretty strong tolerance for stevia. So, when a tea is so insanely stevia heavy that even I can’t bare it that’s usually a really bad sign. I feel like I understand the intention of having it in the blend, though. There are a lot of ingredients added to the blend (likely as “detox” ingredients) that typically do not taste very pleasant on their own, such as the ashwagandha. I’m sure the sweetness of the stevia was meant to hide some of that. Instead it just added a second unpleasant thing on top of that earthy, bitter unpleasant note.
A smarter approach, in my opinion, would have been to double down on the spices and mask it that way – the cardamom, once again, is a star in this tea and it the blends saving grace. More cardamom and less stevia would have tasted way better. But I guess the “sweetness” might appeal to a certain customer base who would be attracted to a detox blend…
But not me. Nope…
Advent Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/CIgyLwTgXrz/
Adventaggedon Day 7 – Tea 3/6
This is the first tea from the Mariage Freres advent that I’ve had to add to the database, and to be totally honest I’m just too tired tonight to fill out the entry properly – maybe tomorrow if I have more energy…
This is what I started my day with though, with a little bit of matcha honey added after trying a few sips of it. It’s basically another green with with florals – pretty jasmine heavy as well, but a smidge of something citrus-y. It reminded me a lot of Jasmine in Love from earlier in the week. I wasn’t huge into Jasmine in Love, and I liked this one even less because it didn’t have the same rose notes. Not that it’s bad – it’s not. It’s just not really my jam. I feel like that was true about a lot of teas today – most are fine teas, but just really not my thing…
Advent Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/CIgyLwTgXrz/
Adventaggedon Day 7 – Tea 2/7
Another day where the Matcha pick isn’t so much an actual matcha as it is a matcha “treat”! In this case, it was a small pot of matcha infused honey – and I was actually excited for this one because I wanted to try the various matcha infused honeys over the Spring/Summer when they came out but we actually didn’t have extras around the office so I never got the chance!!
Honey is actually my sweetener of choice, though I don’t sweeten my teas often. I decided to combine this with another advent tea – from Mariage Freres. However, I also tried it on my own first to get a sense of the taste. To be totally honest, I wasn’t in love with it. It’s pretty thick/goopy and doesn’t quite seem like a creamed honey but it’s clearly not a more fluid one either. It’s very matcha forward – honestly maybe a little bit too much matcha!?
Yeah, if I was gonna make any change here it would be to reduce the amount of matcha…
But I’ll use it, because I do love honey and there were definitely teas that Spring to mind that would be well suited to this flavour profile.
Advent Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/CIgyLwTgXrz/
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.
Adventaggedon Day 7 – Tea 1/6
I was thrilled seeing this one today – I think it was one of, what I’m sure was several, banana teas that I suggested/voted on. It’s also a real blast from the past because I don’t think I’ve had this tea for 6-7 years, which means it would have been “Frank Era” 52Teas…
It smells incredible though – fluffy/whipped creamy banana and coconut notes! Steeped up, it’s a little bit lighter but still very creamy and smooth. Banana forward flavour, with a moderately full bodied black tea and hints of vanilla and coconut. I remember the flavour being more robust, but it’s both been seven years so my memory might be incorrect AND this is a different blender AND my tastes have likely changed so those are all important factors at play…
With that said, I don’t really mind that it’s not as strong/sweet – it feels like a more sophisticated/refined take on a banana pudding profile that still nails the concept.
Advent Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/CIgyLwTgXrz/
Adventaggedon Day 6 – Tea 6/6
This was an AWESOME way to start my morning. I’m pretty much a sucker for almost anything blueberry flavoured from DAVIDsTEA, but this is also just my favourite of all DT’s fruity matchas in general. It’s still not my favourite overall, but I don’t believe Rose Matcha is in the advent this year so this might be as close as it gets!
It was sweet, comforting and perfectly timed out for the podcast episode that I recorded today with Marika, but more on that in the future… ;)
Advent Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/CIeSOftgdHs/
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.
Adventaggedon Day 6 – Tea 5/6
Ask and you shall recieve! I said earlier in the week that I wanted to try Marco Polo on other tea bases, particularly white and rooibos, and today’s tea was the rooibos version! I was definitely very excited digging into it this afternoon.
It’s very nice – the same sweet and robust rhubarb from the OG Marco Polo but maybe a little less floral/perfumed in its undertones!? The rooibos used here is smooth and has a honeyed graham/hazelnut quality that is delicious and works well with this fruity flavour. I think I actually enjoy this version of Marco Polo much more and I would totally buy this to add to my ever growing line up of rooibos based rhubarb teas…
Advent Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/CIeSOftgdHs/
Adventaggedon Day 6 – Tea 4/6
This tea was such an interesting surprise – I don’t look up the ingredients up the Offblak blends before trying them, usually, and I fully expected a more herbal mix of ingredients with lots of peppermint leaves and maybe some blueberry or hibiscus with flavouring.
Instead, this is majority rooibos with some speckling of other ingredients mixed throughout and it smelled wonderfully but strongly of cooling menthol peppermint and wintergreen. Not much blueberry to the aroma of the leaf in the sachet. Steeped up, it’s sort of weird but in a compelling way!? I would absolutely call this more of a mint than a blueberry blend and it’s a very cooling/crisp mint heavy on the menthol that feels more like it’s coming from a peppermint oil/extract than actual peppermint leaves or even a typical mint flavouring. It really hits you in the back of the chest, and I felt if I was in a comic I would have “breathed out” ice crystals/frost after each sip. I loved it though, especially mixed with the rather woody and mineral heavy rooibos and this almost ‘forest berry’ leaning blueberry.
I didn’t feel like there was much sweetness to the blend – but I also ended up not wanting that at all. I’m so curious to see it reappear again because damn it was interesting and between this and yesterday’s blend I might actually be shaping up to have enough blends I like that I would consider an order.
Advent Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/CIeSOftgdHs/
