Sunny C by DavidsTea
Fruit Infusion / Flavoured
$8.98 for 50g
First Impressions
I picked up a little pouch of Sunny C at one of my local DavidsTea retail locations (yes, I am still very much aware of how lucky I am to have several locations within driving distance to me!). I first smelled this one in store and was intrigued because the aroma of Sunny C reminds me of Tang. If you’re not familiar with Tang, it’s an orange drink mix that smells sweet and chock full of artificial orange flavouring and colour. Sunny C is marketed as an “immune booster bursting with orange, carrot & a sunny dose of Vitamin C”.
If you’re not into drinking your vitamins, vitamin C is also found in many foods – including citrus fruit, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and strawberries. Vitamin C is also important in preventing scurvy and lengthening the duration of the common cold – although there isn’t a lot of evidence to support vitamin C in preventing the common cold. Either way, vitamin C is important.
There are some huge dried fruit pieces in this fruit infusion blend that DavidsTea has put together. Sunny C consists of: apple, carrots, pineapple, orange, hibiscus, lemon peel, pink peppercorns, safflowers, ascorbic acid (vitamin C) and natural flavouring. For something that smells incredibly like Tang, which is the most fake-smelling orange drink item that I can think of, I’m surprised that orange is the fourth ingredient in the blend and not somewhere higher up.
Preparation
DavidsTea recommends steeping Sunny C in 95°C (200°F) water for 5+ minutes. My initial steep of Sunny C was for 7 minutes.
First Taste
Sunny C steeps to a dark reddish pink – a colour that I primarily attribute to the presence of hibiscus flowers and possibly also the safflowers as well. It still smells like Tang, but not as sweet as the dry leaf smells like. The flavour is surprisingly not as sweet as I expected it to be – and doesn’t taste as artificial as I remember Tang to be. Sunny C has a nice citrus flavour, which a pleasant acidic mouthpucker that I am attributing to all the acidic ingredients in the blend. It is a very pleasant fruity infusion that is very pleasant hot – I think it would also make for a nice iced tea as well, given the blend of ingredients, but it’s November and I really don’t want to make iced tea right now.
A Second Cup?
I attempted to resteep Sunny C once, but honestly the flavour was just not there and I would recommend only having one steep with this fruit infusion.
My Overall Impression
I liked DavidsTea’s Sunny C. For a fruity blend, it has a pleasant flavour and smells like a drink that I drank far too often when I was at my neighbour’s house after school when I was waiting for my parents to get home. If your main purpose in drinking it is consume some vitamin C, it isn’t that bad – as per the DavidsTea product page for Sunny C, this fruit infusion contains 15% of the daily recommended intake of vitamin C per cup. That said, there are less expensive ways to get in your daily vitamin C (for instance, an average orange can contain approximately 88% of your daily recommended vitamin C intake), but it is fairly tasty.
Curious about the cup rating system? Click here to learn more.