Blood Orange Earl Grey (Organic)

Sipdown
After a long day at the hospital visiting a precious baby and their parents, having to drive the most chaotic way home – thanks to the highway constantly being shutdown for construction (welcome to Ohio) – and the snow (making a loud and brief return to the land), I needed a big mug of tea. I reached into the sipdown pile blindly and grabbed this tea. I really love the play that DT has with their Earl Grey blends. This was one of the special EG blends remaining from a couple of years ago, when I discovered DT, after had been given a sample of their Coffee Puerh through an online tea swap. I knew of their existence, of course, they are one of the bigger tea distributors, but the Columbus, Ohio location had closed well before the time I had learned of their existence in our state (I always assumed they were solely Canada based).

Anyway, I had 4tsp of this sitting in the bag. I had the intention of making this as an iced cup. I was video gaming while making the cup, thus, in my hurry, made it a hot cup of tea. Let me note that this, in no way will sway my opinion of this blend, since the final dregs of the highly over brewed and overly bitter mug was the error of my multitasking. One must admit the fault of their hand, if there’s the knowing that the tea usually makes a lovely cuppa. However, before I close on this review, if you’re ever curious what this will taste like, with the intention of it being enough leaf to be watered down by ice and not as a hot cuppa, imagine yourself drinking a very, very bitter hot mug of IPA beer.

This is definitely one of the nicest teas I’ve ever tried. Sweet, but not too sweet, and just really really nice. This may be my new favourite black tea!

This can be a little tart and bitter, but with enough sugar it’s decent. The orange is pretty authentic, but it’s not really something I would reach for over an herbal orange tea. This just doesn’t have a place in my cupboard. I shared it with someone, who wasn’t able to taste the orange and found the floral flavors to be much too strong. I shared it with someone else who loved the orange flavor and didn’t notice the bergamot. My final cup of this I drank cold, and I thought the orange and bergamot complemented each other very well. The bergamot definitely shows up in a very floral way, but it sort of works. I guess my opinions have evolved slightly over the course of my 2 oz bag.

I gave this one another shot, steeped for about half as long as I steeped it last time. The hibiscus flavour still smashed its way through the orange and bergamot, but it was more balanced this time around. Enjoyable astringency, very little black tea flavour.

I boosted my rating from a 40 to 45. Still wouldn’t recommend — I just don’t pick up on the citrusy blood orange vibe! Maybe I’ll try it iced with some sweetener next.

Turns out I really like flavored earl grey tea! I wasn’t sure about this one but one sip and I was hooked. The citrus mixed with black tea works so well. Just smelling it makes me feel comfy and warm.

Hot: Yes
Latte: Not sure, anyone know if this would work as a latte?
Double Steep: Yes, I added just a little more tea to the water the second time but only because I really prefer my teas strong

(DavidsTea 2)

This is one of those times I really regret not being able to pick up only 10g from a store. I don’t tend to like a lot of orangey teas, but hoped the black base + earl grey would redeem it. Unfortunately, not the case. Not enough earl grey, and plenty of orange, but I’m finding it somewhat bitter (my money is on orange peel and/or hibiscus). Possibly a good tea for certain palates, but not mine.

Gongfu!

So last weekend I did an instagram live tea tasting and conversation with TheOolongDrunk and The Tea Squirrel – and during the conversation we did a bit of a “weird tea prep” experiment where we have a live Gongfu session of an Earl Grey. I picked this one because I didn’t want to do a traditional Earl Grey – I’m not big on bergamot and I felt like that might be too aggressive for my tastes.

I kept my steeps VERY short – flash steeps only until after the third steep – but I actually thought this was alright. Very weighted towards aromatic and floral bergamot at the start but also a really robust black tea and a sweet and fragrant orange. It was mostly just like a more aromatic version of how this tea tastes prepared normally, but with more top note bergamot and less pithyness to the finish. After a bit, the bergamot steeped out a fair bit, and then more of the hibiscus and blood orange were left to shine in a steep or two. From there it just gradually got weaker and by steep seven the leaf was spent.

Would I do it again? I don’t think so – but as an exercise I thought it was interesting and still pretty enjoyable!

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.