Category: Review

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DavidsTea’s White Nectarine

White Nectarine by DavidsTea
White Tea / Flavoured
$11.50 for 50g

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First Impressions

White Nectarine is a tea that DavidsTea put out last year, and they brought it back again for the spring. It’s a rather curious tea because while nectarine is in the name, the first listed ingredient is apricots. Nectarine comes into play as natural flavouring, but none of the actual fruit is included. That said, this tea smells amazing. It smells like a mix of nectarines and peaches, I can’t really discern any apricots from the scent at all.

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White Nectarine is made up of: apricots, white tea, blackberry leaf, safflowers, and natural nectarine flavouring. For those concerned, this tea does contain sulphites (in the apricots).

Preparation

DavidsTea recommends steeping this in 90°C (194°F) water for 4-5 minutes. I steeped for about 4 minutes.

First Taste

White Nectarine steeps to a nice medium golden yellow colour. It smells of a mix of peaches and nectarines, it’s a fairly strong scent too. The taste doesn’t quite reflect the fragrance of the tea though, as the taste of white nectarines isn’t as strong as you might expect. There is some sweetness to the tea. It’s an okay cup of tea, I allowed a cup of White Nectarine to chill in my fridge and it’s quite tasty. I think it’s far more enjoyable iced than hot.

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A Second Cup?

One more steep did not do White Nectarine any favours – the nectarine/peach smell isn’t nearly as strong, and the taste leaves a lot to be desired. I would say that White Nectarine does well for one steep only.

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My Overall Impression

2cups-2

I thought that DavidsTea’s White Nectarine was just okay. I thought it did better as an iced tea than a cup of hot tea. The obvious mismatch in taste to aroma leaves something to be desired, and the tea doesn’t hold up well to being resteeped, which is disappointing. Adding a little bit of sweetener helps to punch up the flavour, if you’re finding that the tea is a bit bland. It’s fairly middle-of-the-road when it comes to price, and I think there are other fruity teas that do much better than White Nectarine does. However, I will be finishing off this bag that I have because it’s delicious as an iced tea, but I don’t think I’ll be buying more for my tea stash.

Curious about the cup rating system? Click here to learn more.

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Tea Experience: Catfé

Catfé
Vancouver, British Columbia
Price Range: $2.95-4.50 (drinks), $2.95-6.85 (food items)

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Catfé has been immensely popular since the announcement that a cat café was opening in Vancouver. Following in the footsteps of popular cat eateries in other countries, Catfé opened after figuring out the logistics of having cats and serving food (spoiler: the room for petting cats and the area for purchasing beverages are separated). The cats at Catfé are all available for adoption and are provided to Catfé by the BC SPCA. On Thursdays, they are closed to shuffle in new cats and to allow them to become accustomed to their new environment. I recently went to Catfé with a friend, who’s a food blogger at BitterSweetLife.

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DavidsTea’s Three Wishes

Three Wishes by DavidsTea
Black Tea & Green Tea / Flavoured
$7.40 for 50g

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First Impressions

I actually got this bag of tea a while ago (2015…), and I never got around to reviewing it! Sadly, DavidsTea has decided to retire Three Wishes so I decided to go ahead and review it now in case any of you wanted to snag some while you still can (I do not know if retail stores will still be carrying it, but as of today it is still on the DavidsTea website with a 25% off discount if you buy in 250g quantities – full retail price if you purchase in 50g increments). I bought this tea at the suggestion of a woman who worked at the retail store when I mentioned that I wanted to try something new, and then I rattled off a few of the teas that I enjoyed that DavidsTea put out. This was one of the teas that she recommended

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The dry leaf of Three Wishes smells heavily of green tea and peaches. I can’t smell roses or the black tea base at all, but that’s not too terrible because I like the smell of peaches. The dry leaf looks interesting, there’s sunflower petals in there as well so it’s a pretty tea to look at. Three Wishes is categorized by DavidsTea as being a black tea, I think this is because black tea is listed first in the ingredients. The ingredients are: Chinese black tea, Chinese green tea, sunflower petals, jasmine blossoms, rose petals, and artificial flavouring.

Preparation

DavidsTea recommends steeping this tea in 96°C (204°F) water for 4-7 minutes. This might be accurate if the tea only contained a black tea base, but it doesn’t. Green teas need to be steeped in cooler water for a shorter period of time or else it’ll oversteep and be a very bitter cup of tea. I steeped mine in water that was about 85°C (185°F) for about 3 minutes.

First Taste

Three Wishes steeps to a deep golden yellow, which is quite pretty and very aromatic. The tea smells purely of peaches and green tea – I can’t smell the black tea at all. The taste of Three Wishes is a bit surprising. It tastes of melon (perhaps honeydew?) and peaches, along with the green tea base. There is no trace of the black tea, roses, or jasmine taste in the tea at all. Which is a bit disappointing, given the ingredients, but it is a very pleasant cup of tea. The peaches taste is delightful, but the tea by itself is not very sweet. I added a bit of sweetener to brighten up the peach flavour and it worked out quite nicely. I think this tea would do very well as an iced tea or cold steeped, and would probably taste quite good in the summer time.

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A Second Cup?

I attempted to resteep Three Wishes. Unfortunately, the taste of the melon and peaches does not hold up well. The taste of the green tea still overwhelms the black tea base, and I’m still missing the floral component. The second cup was definitely not as enjoyable as the first steep, I would not recommend Three Wishes for one more steep.

My Overall Impression

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I thought that DavidsTea’s Three Wishes was just okay. Three Wishes makes for an interesting tea, because only a portion the ingredients are detectable in the steeped tea. I would have ranked it a bit higher if DavidsTea had given more appropriate steeping instructions. I suspect that if you follow the steeping instructions as-is that you’d end up with a very bitter cup of tea and would wind up throwing it away. As it stands, Three Wishes is a tasty tea with a great fruity taste to it. It doesn’t do well with resteeping, but would likely do well iced. I do recommend steeping it at a lower temperature for a shorter period of time – life is too short to be drinking bitter tea.

Curious about the cup rating system? Click here to learn more.