Juniper Joy

AJRimmer Advent Day 12

I’ve happily sipped through half this cup and now I’m mildly annoyed after calming down from spitting mad that my computer force updated when I started it. I have a long history of hating updates for various reason. Deep breaths.

This tea is nice though! It mostly smells of some kind of fruit with juniper, which isn’t a common thing I’ve seen in teas. Every so often I get a whiff of something weird in the tea that I don’t like, but it’s fleeting and I haven’t figured out what it’s about. Papaya sometimes smells strange while tasting delicious. The level of juniper I taste fluctuates a bit. The finish is a lighter version of what the sip provided. I’m really liking how this blend is combining sweet with savory!

Update: Just read the info on the steepster entry for this tea. It has hibiscus in it?! I didn’t even taste it! :D Also; strawberry! I can totally see that now!

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this one, but the result is lightly fruity. It’s a little thinner than I would like. Also it contains an almost pointless amount of black tea. I am definitely enjoying how light and refreshing it is. Not sour at all, just a mild strawberry. I was really hoping to taste some juniper, but unfortunately, I didn’t.

I love this tea iced! It a sweet hibiscus tea, but a slight chemical aftertaste.

I was happy to see DavidsTea release another juniper forward tea. I love the flavor of juniper, and find it unfortunately underutilized. I actually didn’t realize this was a black tea, and let it to steep for about 10 minutes. The flavor wasn’t impacted (I actually can’t see any tea leaves in the dry mix, or taste the base at all). I find that the cream flavoring is really heavy, and in conjunction with the hibiscus, I just can’t really taste the juniper at all. I prefer Wintergreen Wonderland over this.

Another new tea from the New Year’s stuff this year!

This is a weird one for me, and not really because of the tea itself but more just because I saw the tea go through a TON of changes through development up until the final blend. There’s an earlier version of it that’s a lot more forward on the strawberry flavour and a little less lemongrass heavy that I just adored – but I do really like the final version as well.

I think I just want more fruity black teas on the wall in general which might bias me a little bit, but this is a fun mix! It’s still strawberry tasting – more of that cooked down and dense strawberry leaning towards being jammy, and less a bright/fresh strawberry taste. I get a little lemongrass and some more herbal elements from the ingredients like the nettle, but the best part to me is the pine notes from the juniper. I like juniper a lot and have often been known to pre crush the juniper in my measured out tea leaf in order to extract extra pine notes and make it really strong. I think the strawberry and very, very slight tartness go together with it so well! It reminds me of a some type of especially botanical forward gin based cocktail with like a strawberry simple syrup made from cooked down strawberries and I am sssoooooo here for that!

I have drank a lot of this tea over the last year – and I don’t really know that other people will appreciate it as much as I have because I don’t know how commercial juniper/gin are as flavours, but I hope the strawberry makes it more approachable because I think it’s a pretty cool blend of ingredients and a nice tea!

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.