Tag: DavidsTea

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DavidsTea’s Dragon Pearls

Dragon Pearls by DavidsTea
Green Tea / Straight
$14.98 for 50g

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First Impressions

Dragon Pearls is a very pretty tea. It’s hand rolled tea leaves that are mostly two colours. I found with the bag that I had purchased from DavidsTea, they’re generally uniform in size. There’s a fragrance to the pearls that is very floral with a heavy jasmine aroma. This is a green tea, so a jasmine scented green tea isn’t out of the realm of possibilities. The ingredients do not include jasmine, however, like DavidsTea’s jasmine green teas are often described as being ‘scented’. The ingredients for Dragon Pearls are: Chinese green tea from Zhejiang Province. As far as green teas go, this isn’t the least expensive option that DavidsTea has (it also isn’t the most expensive – that honour goes to their Butterfly Jasmine and some expensive matcha options).

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Preparation

DavidsTea recommends steeping Dragon Pearls in 85°C (185°F) water for 3 to 4 minutes. They steeping instructions also mentions using 1 ¼ teaspoon of tea. Because the pearls will expand and unfurl, I would not recommend using that much. I used about 10 of the little pearls in my Tea For One pot (which produces about 2 cups of tea) – I would recommend using about 5-6 pearls for 1 cup of tea.

First Taste

Dragon Pearls is a very nice green tea. The pearls unfurl to reveal full tea leaves, which is nice. The steeped tea has a light floral aroma to it, which is nice. The tea itself is very smooth with a buttery quality to it. There is a natural sweetness to the tea. I had steeped it for about 3 minutes for the first steep, I feel that the steeping time recommended by DavidsTea is fair – I would not over steep this tea (or any other green tea) because it could go bitter very easily. Steeping for 3 minutes resulted in a cup of tea that was not bitter at all and was very enjoyable.

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A Second Cup?

I resteeped the same tea leaves an additional three times. I add about 30 seconds of steeping time for each subsequent steeping. The flavours did get better for steep #2 – it was a little sweeter, the floral taste was more present on my tongue, and it had the same great buttery quality. I think steeps 3 and 4 were very similar to steep #2. This tea does improve when you resteep it, which is a nice quality to have in a tea.

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My Overall Impression

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I loved DavidsTea’s Dragon Pearls. While it isn’t the least expensive green tea I’ve tried, it has some added value by being very easy to resteep – which is a bonus whenever you have an expensive tea, you get more bang for your buck with resteeping! It has a great natural sweetness that I think is easy on the palate. The buttery quality kept me wanting to resteep it, it’s just a very enjoyable tea overall. It doesn’t need anything extra (in my opinion), the only thing you need to watch is that you don’t burn it with water that’s too hot or steep it for too long.

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DavidsTea’s Mom’s Apple Pie

Mom’s Apple Pie by DavidsTea
Green Tea / Flavoured
$7.98 for 50g

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First Impressions

I bought a little bag of Mom’s Apple Pie from the store purely because it smelled amazing. The dry leaf has this amazing apple cinnamon aroma that I love from apple pie, so I was pretty much sold on it as soon as I smelled it. Mom’s Apple Pie is a green tea and the ingredients are: green tea, apple, cinnamon, natural and artificial flavouring. Mom’s Apple Pie is (yet another…) limited release tea, so if you’re interested in giving it a try now would be a good time.

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The tea itself has plentiful pieces of apple and cinnamon in with the green tea, which is nice to see. It has a great smell to it, definitely reminds me of apple pie. The problem with teas that come with flavouring is that it can often be lost when steeping, or when resteeping.

Preparation

DavidsTea recommends steeping in 85°C (185°F) water for 3-4 minutes. I steeped in my Tea For One pot for about 4 minutes.

First Taste

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This tea has a beautiful smell when it’s steeping and after I pour a cup of it. It has a very rich apple cinnamon smell. The unfortunate thing is that the taste of apples is weak in the tea, and the cinnamon is fairly lost in the tea itself, which is disappointing because it is very much present in the smell of the steeped tea. I added a bit of sugar to my cup of tea and found that it brought out the taste of apples and cinnamon quite a bit, but it wasn’t enough to overcome my disappointment in the tea. I like trying green teas, and I’ve had good teas with apple in it before (Honeycrisp Apple is one that I wound up getting a whole tin of). Mom’s Apple Pie raised my expectations of itself because of the great smell it had, but the taste is just lacking.

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A Second Cup?

I attempted to resteep Mom’s Apple Pie but found that the weak apple taste was even more lost. I would not recommend doing one more steep with Mom’s Apple Pie.

My Overall Impression

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I didn’t like DavidsTea’s Mom’s Apple Pie. I found the smell of the dry leaf and steeped tea to be much better than the taste of the tea itself. The cinnamon was missing in the tea and the apple flavour was weak, I had high hopes for this tea because of how good it smelled, but I found it sorely lacking in flavour. I would definitely recommend adding a little sugar/sweetener if you’re going to give Mom’s Apple Pie a try because it does help bring out more of the flavours in the tea. Because of the disconnect between dry and steeped tea, I just had to give this tea one cup. I wanted to love it, because of how good it smelled, but there are much better flavoured green teas out there.

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DavidsTea’s The Earl’s Valentine

The Earl’s Valentine by DavidsTea
Black Tea / Flavoured
$9.75 for 50g

The Earl’s Valentine was a limited edition Valentine’s Day tea put out by DavidsTea. The review is coming to you in March because it took me a while to track down the tea as it was sold out in stores near me.

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First Impressions

I was first introduced to The Earl’s Valentine last year. I had bought a small bag to sample, less than 25g, and when I had the first cup I was hooked! And then I tried to go back to the store to buy more and it was already sold out and long gone by the time I went back (a day or two after Valentine’s Day). This year, I tried to go to the store ahead of time, but it had been delayed getting to the local stores. And by the time the stores did get it in stock, I was told a lot of them only received 1 kilo of The Earl’s Valentine and many of the sold out the same day. I wound up buying two 50g bags online so I could get my fix. This tea is a black tea, the dry leaf smells heavily of chocolate oranges with a hint of floral goodness. You can thank the chocolate and the bergamot for that wonderful mix. It reminds me a lot of the Terry’s chocolate oranges that are often on sale around Christmas time.

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The Earl’s Valentine is made up of: roasted carob, black tea, chocolate pieces, rose buds, cornflower petals, natural and artificial bergamot, chocolate and cocoa flavorings. There is also the addition of an allergen warning that this product contains milk and soy.

Preparation

DavidsTea recommends steeping The Earl’s Valentine in 96°C (205°F) water for 4-7 minutes. I steeped for about 5 minutes.

First Taste

The Earl’s Valentine steeps to a surprisingly not murky orange colour. I say surprisingly because I find that most teas with added chocolate often isn’t clear. This one isn’t too bad. When taking in the aroma of a freshly steeped cup of The Earl’s Valentine, you can really smell the bergamot with a hint of chocolate. The smell of roses was more present in the dry leaf than the steeped tea, but some floral notes are in the smell and taste of this tea. The bergamot isn’t as strong in this tea as it is in DavidsTea’s Organic Cream of Earl Grey, but it is still enjoyable. I really like Earl Grey teas in general, so this one does hit the right notes for me – Earl Grey teas with a twist generally make me happy.

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I did wind up adding just a bit of sugar to this tea. I found that despite the addition of chocolate, it wasn’t sweet enough for me. The addition of sugar does help to brighten up the bergamot and chocolate flavours in the tea, so I would recommend adding some sort of sweetener if you can. There is a bit of an oily layer on the surface of this tea, this would be from the melted chocolate. It’s not unpleasant, but this is the type of tea that I would recommend having hot or mixing with milk or cream so you’re not subjected to the oily surface layer when the tea is cooled or cold.

A Second Cup?

I attempted to resteep The Earl’s Valentine and found that it didn’t resteep very well as many of the flavourings that I loved in cup one were gone by cup two. This is another one of those one steep wonders.

My Overall Impression

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I liked DavidsTea’s The Earl’s Valentine. Perhaps I was waxing nostalgia when I went on my hunt to find this year this year, because I only had so little last February, or it could be that the formulation of this tea had changed between last year and this year. The Earl’s Valentine is a good alternative to the classic/plain Earl Grey, so there is definitely that. I find the combination of chocolate and bergamot to be very tasty, and the floral notes left by the rose buds in the tea make me feel like I should be having this as part of a tea party. I would recommend adding a sweetener to this tea, as it does help brighten up the flavours a lot.

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