DAVIDsTEA

15 years later, this perennial blend is still on the DavidsTea menu. I really enjoyed the sample included in this year’s 24 Days calendar. I’ve ordered it before, but it had been a long time. The potent Saigon cinnamon makes it extra spicy! Cardamom is also dominant, and the overall mouthfeel has a kind of sharpness compared to traditional chais. So, I like it to mellow it with creamer. Very good “wakeup” chai first thing in the morning.

This is a light and refreshing take on cider, missing the heavy spices and added sugar. It’s mostly sweet, but a little bit sour too… as if the apple variety in the ingredients was a tangy Pink Lady or Granny Smith (rather than a super sweet Fuji or Honeycrisp). I might buy this one because of its unique flavor profile. It’s quite different from all the other herbal blends in my cupboard.

This is kind of sour and not my favorite. I’m not sure what it’s going for. Sometimes the flavor is okay, but sometimes it’s too weird.

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…

hate the salt

i don’t know what i expected! it’s nutty and tastes almost exactly as it smells. i don’t know if i’ve ever actually had oolong before.

cinnamon sugar, yes. churro? no. it just tastes like cinnamon and sugar. i will say that at least it doesn’t have the fake stevia taste that a lot of the sweeter davidstea blends have, os that works in its flavour. i like it, i don’t mind it at all. it’s just objectively got nothing to do with churros LOL

mixed it with black tea this time; i put a little too much and the chocolate macaroon just got totally overpowered. i’ll try again next time!

hm! very light flavour, but pleasant. I think I would mix it with actual straight black tea next time i brew it because as others have said the tea flavour itself is very light, its mostly notes of cocoa and coconut. not bad though!!

Kaylee Advent Day 13!
The name is quite accurate! The strongest flavor is a fresh, earthy ginger. Behind that, there’s the tart cranberry. The only thing I’m missing is something to make me think of bubbles. The flavors are super bold, so next time I think I’ll go with less leaf and a shorter steep time.

This tea is brand new online and in stores!

As you might guess from the name, it’s meant to be more of a relaxing type of tea to unwind with before bedtime. You might also pick up from the word play that it’s berries and cream flavoured. Specifically, blackberry.

The end of the year/start of the new year is always a bit more of a wellness push at DT. We’ve been releasing Spring wellness campaigns as long as I’ve been an employee (almost ten years!) and, honestly, even before that as well. Sleep is a big wellness pillar, and though we don’t always release a new sleep/relax blend each year we felt it was time for something fresh feeling.

So when I started working on this tea I wanted to make sure I was taking it in a different direction than the existing teas in our sleep and relax collection. That was a big part of why I chose blackberry as the hero flavour, since a more juicy and ripe tasting berry was something quite different than the rest of the assortment. And, at that point, tying in a bit of cream to round it out just felt so complimentary. It’s still mostly a berry blend, but I like that little kiss of vanilla that closes out the sip! It’s super iceable, and though I know most people probably aren’t making an iced tea before bed (though maybe a cold brew) I think it’s nice to have a blend that really gives you that option.

As far as the functional ingredients go, I leaned into chamomile with this one. However, to keep it different from our other chamomile teas (ex. Mother’s Little Helper and Valerian Nights) I wanted to make sure I didn’t add valerian root to this blend. In fact, I doubled down on the chamomile and actually included two types in the blend: German Chamomile, which is the type we normally use in our teas, and Roman Chamomile which are much larger, whiter coloured flowers. Double the chamomile, double the relaxation!?

The tea base here is green rooibos, and I specifically wanted to utilize green rooibos because of its lighter, fresher, and more fruity taste compared to red rooibos. I worried that with red rooibos and blackberry, we might get a medicinal effect. However, the green rooibos is such a chameleon here that I feel confident that rooibos haters will have a much better experience with this blend!

And then, lastly, I decided to add in adaptogenic schisandra berries. While not specifically a “sleep ingredients”, adaptogens can be a great way to let go of mental or physical stress and unwind, which makes it easier to get yourself in a more relaxed state. I love them as an ingredient but since they have such a distinctly tart flavour they’re hard to find appropriate places to incorporate them. A bright and juicy blackberry tea, though? Yeah, that’s a pretty good buddy system.

I think what’s kind of cool is that, though sleep and relax was top of mind, there’s also a lot of ingredients here connected with skin health too: rooibos, chamomile, and schisandra. Think “beauty sleep” in the sense of enjoying a hydrating blend before bed with ingredients that have history of use for things like skin blemishes or inflammation. So, there’s a bit of a two-in-one happening here.

Honestly, though, even if you don’t care at all about the wellness side of things, this is still just a really pleasant and fresh tasting blackberry blend worth trying on flavour alone. I know that I’ve been really liking it as a cold brew to wind down with in the evenings!

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.

knittingopera Swap Advent Calendar 2025 – Day 10
Theme: Winter Wonderland
Song: Winter Wonderland by Elvis Presley

I greatly enjoy silver needle, and this was no exception. Very smooth and creamy with notes of hay and oats, and then soft hints of wildflowers, honey, cucumber, and milk. A lovely tea for relaxing in the evening. And this Elvis rendition was a fun pick, I’d never heard it before!

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=ClT5HqaiAUI&si=EZT26pi6Kiq5yGuB

This smells lovely, both in the dry leaf and the steeped tea. Mint, peppermint, and just a touch of creamy coffee in the background… and it really tastes like what is on the tin! When I was young, I was one of those teens that proclaimed coffee was nasty based on the smell, but my mother insisted I try a coffee she brought back from a local coffee shop, saying, “This isn’t what you are thinking, I swear!” I took a sip of what was a mocha with creme de menthe flavoring, and my knees went weak… and after that I insisted that my Mom take me with when she went for coffee! As I got older and started having more GI issues from my chronic migraine condition, the acidity of coffee started to really get to my tum, so I let it go. But this tea really brought me back to that memory of the creme de menthe mocha.

It certainly isn’t coffee forward like the real thing was, but there is something in the background that leaves me with a sort of coffee impression in the aftertaste. The chocolate mint flavor is very rich and tasty! It comes off very creamy, with a sweetness that isn’t cloying. The chocolate doesn’t have that alcohol-esque flavor to it, and it blends nicely with the mint. It’s very satisfying. I’m enjoying it plain, but I’m sure it would make a decadent latte as well… I will have to try that before I finish off the bag!

it has a little bit of bourbon taste. i just wish they went with regular sugar and less apple and no stevia. i honestly think i could mix up my own, better version; most of the ingredients are pretty basic. that said there is a bourbon-y taste at the end that i like! (though i dont actually like bourbon LOL) recommending bc i think it’s worth a try

hmm…. need to try it again. bit too much stevia flavour but i enjoy what they were going for.

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!

Good for a black tea but didn’t really taste any flavors

Advent Swap tea!
I like that this isn’t too clove heavy, but there’s something at the end I can’t put my finger on. Just doesn’t finish well. Otherwise an enjoyable cuppa.

a bit saccharine, but i like it

steeped it for longer and at the right temp and it was way better, very cookie like. still not really toffee though…