Tag: DavidsTea

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DavidsTea’s Vanilla Orchid

Vanilla Orchid by DavidsTea
Oolong Tea / Flavoured
$11.98 for 50g

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First Impressions

Vanilla Orchid has an incredibly strong vanilla scent to the dry tea. When I first smelled it, I thought of vanilla pudding. The oolong base isn’t as noticeable as the vanilla that was added to it, but the tea is lovely. The vanilla reminds me of baking, which is always a pleasant memory/thought/activity. I love vanilla. There’s a very light floral aroma with the oolong base, but it doesn’t overpower the vanilla.

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Vanilla Orchid is made up of: Huang Jin Gui Oolong from Anxi in Fujian Province, natural vanilla flavouring. Only two ingredients!

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Preparation

DavidsTea recommends steeping Vanilla Orchid in 75-80°C (167-176°F) water for 4-7 minutes on their website, the label that printed with my tea in February of this year was 85°C. I steeped it for about 4 minutes for the first steeping.

First Taste

Vanilla Orchid steeps to a pale yellow. The tea is smooth, no bitterness, and has a very light floral taste to it. Overall, the vanilla flavouring is very strong and overpowers the oolong base. The first steeping is delicious, I wish the oolong base was more pronounced, but the tea is delicious. The tea leaves unfurl and they’re about two to two and an half inches long.

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A Second Cup?

Vanilla Orchid resteeps well. I steeped it an additional three times. The vanilla flavouring lessened with each subsequent steeping, but the floral oolong taste becomes more pronounced with each additional steeping. Vanilla Orchid has this creamy taste to it that isn’t noticeable until the second steeping. The tea leaves opened up mostly with the first steeping, but they finish unfurling and opening up by the second steeping.

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My Overall Impression

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I liked DavidsTea’s Vanilla Orchid. The vanilla flavouring is delicious, but I thought the tea improved with the second and third steepings because the natural floral taste of the oolong was stronger. I think the first steeping was the most like vanilla pudding (which I liked), but the oolong base has a lovely, creamy floral taste to it that is second to none. I’d be interested in trying this tea without the added vanilla base, but it does make a decent cup of tea.

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DavidsTea’s Japanese Sencha

Japanese Sencha by DavidsTea
Green Tea / Straight
$9.98 for 50g

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First Impressions

Green tea and I have an interesting relationship, I find it to be a little bit fickle in terms of proper steeping because it can easily burn and oversteep and then you wind up with this bitter, sad cup of tea. It’s a love-hate relationship and often times I wish green tea was less picky about things like water temperature and steeping times, but I digress. Onto the review of Japanese Sencha!

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Japanese Sencha smells like a mix of grass, salt/ocean, and spinach. If you’re a fan of spinach, this might be a tea for you! The saltiness in the smell reminds me a lot of going to the beach and smelling that fresh salty air. It reminds me of seaweed and salt water. Japanese Sencha is made up of: “fine organic steamed Japanese green tea from Mount Fuji, Japan”. Mount Fuji, according to Wikipedia, is the highest peak in Japan, and is also a volcano that last erupted in 1707. I imagine that last eruption would have made the soil quite fertile on the mountain, which would make it ideal to grow on (albeit perhaps a little dangerous, although not having an eruption for 300+ years probably makes a person less worried).

Preparation

DavidsTea recommends steeping in 80°C (176°F) water for 2-3 minutes. Because it’s a green tea and I’m wary of oversteeping, I steeped for just two minutes – life is too short for a bad cup of tea.

First Taste

Japanese Sencha steeps to a very pale yellow-green with a very light scent to it. The taste of this tea is very smooth, the taste of the steeped tea matches the dry leaf very well. It tastes a bit salty, a bit grassy, and reminds me of spinach. The saltiness reminds me a lot of the ocean and seaweed snacks. No bitterness when steeped for two minutes, it makes for a very pleasant cup of tea.

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A Second Cup?

Japanese Sencha holds up pretty well for resteeping. I resteeped it twice (2½ and 3 minutes for each resteep). The tea itself taste the same, although it does begin to fade in terms of flavour in the second resteep. I would say that Japanese Sencha is good for a total of three steepings.

My Overall Impression

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I liked DavidsTea’s Japanese Sencha. It resteeps fairly well, and tastes great – if you like a bit of saltiness in your tea. It’s great plain, I wouldn’t add sweetener or anything like that to it (unless you really wanted to, of course, then go for it). My biggest advice for this tea would be to keep your steeping times low to avoid burning it (really though, that’s my advice for all green teas – don’t burn it!). It’s an enjoyable green tea though, and I quite like it. I’m not overly fond of the spinach-y flavour in the tea though, despite it tasting fairly good, so it’s not something that I think I would be reaching for on a regular basis. Still, it steeps well (and resteeps well), and reminds me of the beach, so it still ranks up there as a good cup of tea!

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DavidsTea’s Mango Madness

Mango Madness by DavidsTea
White Tea / Flavoured
$11.98 for 50g

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First Impressions

I like fruit, I like white teas, but a fruity white tea? Mango Madness came recommended to me by someone who worked at the DavidsTea that I so frequently frequent. It smelled amazing in store – very much like a ripen mango. The dry tea smells like mangoes, apples, and flowers. I cannot for the life of me actually smell the white tea base, but it’s supposedly there. Mango Madness is made up of: apples, white tea, pineapple, orange, safflower, strawberry, calendula petals, mango, stevia extract, and natural mango flavouring. Mango Madness contains sulfites (sulphites) for anyone who’s sensitive to them.

Mango Madness isn’t the nicest looking tea that I’ve reviewed before here on One More Steep, but it certainly has a heavy fruit to tea ratio.

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Preparation

DavidsTea recommends steeping Mango Madness in hot water for 4-7 minutes. Their website indicates that “hot water” is 75-80°C (167-176°F). The base of Mango Madness is a white tea, so you want to make sure that your water isn’t too hot or else you risk burning the leaves. I steeped my pot of Mango Madness for about 4 minutes for the first steep.

First Taste

Mango Madness steeps to a bright yellow that reminds me a lot of the colour of the inside of a ripe mango. This tea lives up to its name as it does smell like mango! The taste of Mango Madness is undeniably fruity. It has a sweetness to it that doesn’t require additional sweetener at all, in my opinion. I can taste the mango and pineapple, along with some subtle floral notes that are a bit difficult to pick out at times. The stevia/sweetener distracts from the natural floral notes in this tea blend.

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A Second Cup?

I attempted to resteep Mango Madness, it was quite watery and didn’t make nearly as much of a punch as the first steeping of Mango Madness. I would say that Mango Madness is only good for one steep.

My Overall Impression

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I loved DavidsTea’s Mango Madness. It’s delicious and lives up to the promise in its name – heavy mango flavour that doesn’t require anything extra. I tried icing the rest of the tea that I had in my pot and it does very well as an iced tea, I would say it would be good as a tea pop (tea mixed with soda water) or just on its own cold. It is quite expensive for a tea that doesn’t do well for being steeped more than once, so do take that into consideration – there are other teas that are less expensive that do equally well when iced. However, if you’re looking for a mango iced tea, Mango Madness will fit the bill!

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