Clementine Cheer

When I first opened up this tea, despite vigorous shaking of the packet, it was pretty much all chunky fruit bits with hardly any oolong on the top, making my first few cups a bit flat (and not as caffeinated as I was wanting). So I started steeping the chunky leaf with a Yorkshire Gold teabag just to up the tea/caffeine content (which actually worked quite well, producing a nice citrusy orange and cream note over the top). By the time I made it to the bottom of the bag, I finally got to where all the oolong tea leaves were hiding and could steep the tea as intended.

The oolong is roasty with an underlying minerality. The orange flavor is very vibrant… it has a very juicy, tangy quality to it, lacking any of the weird orange flavorings that evoke vitamins or Tang. The cream note is a bit more subtle… for my cups where I got almost entirely chunky herbal pieces it was far more prominent, but drinking it on an actual tea base, it presents more as a sweetness at the end of the sip and lightens the cup a bit.

The citrus is really spot-on, I can definitely see this being akin to nomming on a clementine. But I do wish it were easier to get a more consistent cup without having to up-end the entire package into a ramikin first and then subsequently have to try to get all the contents back into the package without making a mess.

Homemade Advent Calendar from AJRimmer – Day 24

Ooh, I’d wanted to try this one. Clementine – check. Creamy vanilla note – check. It’s good hot, but even better as a tea soda. And now I want some fresh clementines…

DavidsTea Workshop Calendar 2025, Day 1.

I tasted this tea for the first time today. It is bright and cheerful – like a sunny winter day. It’s also a lightweight tea – not heavy like many fall and winter blends. So, it’s a nice contrast that just lifts your mood in the morning. The Oolong gives gives it an undercurrent of pleasant roasty toastiness, but the dominant flavor is clementine. The sweetness is smooth and honey-like with minimal acidity. It’s just a little tangy – like the satsuma oranges I used to buy around the holidays. (Hard to find them now). Looks like this tea debuted last year, and I’m sad I missed it. This year it’s not for sale individually, but if it ever comes back, I plan to buy it!

David’s 24 Days of Tea Day 1:

This was the first tea of my tea advent calendar. I’ve had the David’s tea calendar several times in the past but it got pretty repetitive (that is, it featured the same teas year after year) so I stopped getting it. Well, this year I decided to go back. And I can see from the back of the box that several teas will be repeats, but there are quite a few that are new to me this year. Like this one. I enjoyed it. It was a light tea, not brisk or heavy with tannins. There was a bit of tartness but it wasn’t completely sour. I won’t order 50 grams of it but I will enjoy a second cup probably in January. I like that David’s give us enough tea to make more than one cup. Sometimes that second cup is even better than the first.

I’ve been mostly missing in action here on Steepster for a few months. I’ve had a bit of a challenging late summer and autumn. The chemo cocktail they had me on is called FolFox. On my third treatment (in August) I had a pretty severe reaction to the Oxylplatin (or however you spell it). They had to put a breathing device down my throat to keep my airway from closing completely. So since then I’ve been on just two different drugs. It has been a slog and my fatigue has been pretty bad. I have one more treatment this Wednesday. Then scans on the 18th and meet with the oncologist on the 24 (Yes. Christmas Eve!) to plan the next step of treatment. I should have all of January off from any treatment, so you can imagine I am really looking forward to January! Maybe my “Get Up and Go” will Get Up and Come Back!

Adventageddon Day 1

Last but certainly not least was Clementine Cheer! I decided to cold brew this one since I was able to supplement the little tin of tea with some extra tea leaf from my personal tea stash. I was super excited to see this tea so early in the advent because it’s one of the new holiday yeas I developed this year. It totally made my afternoon and evening reading and watching the different reviews across social platforms for people drinking and discovering this tea for the first time – both tea friends and complete strangers!

I actually usually drink this tea hot, but I enjoyed my cold brew a lot. It’s really bright and lively in its top notes with this fresh, effervescent mix of clementine and tangerine notes before the gentle roast and minerality of the oolong base sneak in there and ground it a little bit. Without that oolong I think the orange wouldn’t have quite as much presence because it would be brightness with no contrast, and maybe also just a little thin feeling. The finish is just a hint creamy with the vanilla yogurt flavour closing out the sip.

So refreshing, and a great way of building on that feeling of excitement for the holidays without necessarily leaning on super decadent and “heavy feeling” flavours more conventionally associated with Christmas. Those have a place too, don’t get me wrong, but I know we will have plenty of them throughout the rest of advent season so I just appreciated starting things off with something so joyful!

Today’s Advent Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/DDDUEFtyMDA/?img_index=1

Song Pairing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fyi0g_ldl3I&ab_channel=NiinaSoleil

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.