Tag: White Tea

Royal White Peony by DavidsTea
White Tea / Straight
$14.98 for 50g

First Impressions

White Peony is a tea that I’m fairly familiar with – it is a tea that is often available with at the dim sum restaurants that I go with my family. It’s also called Bai Mudan (literally translates to white peony), for those who want to read more about it. DavidsTea’s Royal White Peony is one of their newer straight teas – it’s a nice touch after them releasing many teas with additional flavourings/ingredients. DavidsTea describes Royal White Peony as a “delicate white tea” that has “fresh notes of garden-picked snow peas”.

The dry leaf of Royal White Peony takes up quite a bit of space, it’s a light and airy tea that takes up a lot of space. The tea has a light floral scent, with visible feathery down on the leaves. I’m not getting any of the snow peas mentioned in the description of the tea, but I’m intrigued by it because I’m familiar with bai mudan. Royal White Peony is made of organic white tea from Fujian province.

Preparation

DavidsTea recommends steeping Royal White Peony in hot water for 4 to 7 minutes. Hot water is mentioned on their website as being 75-80°C (167-176°F). I used the green tea setting on my Breville IQ Kettle (175°F) and steeped the first pot for 2 minutes. White teas are steeped for 2 to 5 minutes, I find the recommended steeping times of 4 to 7 minutes to be much too long.

First Taste

Royal White Peony steeps to a pale yellow and has a very delicate floral scent. There’s quite a beautiful taste to this tea, there’s a natural sweetness with floral notes. With the steeping time of two minutes, there is zero bitterness to the tea, a creamy texture to the tea, but also no taste or scent of the mentioned snow peas. It’s a very pleasant tea, I find that it’s easy to drink and I could easily drink this all day.

A Second Cup?

I resteeped Royal White Peony a total of three times. I added an extra minute or so with each subsequent steep – the second steep was the deepest golden yellow colour. The flavouring of the second steep was the best as it had a deeper floral taste, although I am still missing out on the snow peas. I find that the third and fourth steepings were good but not as rich as the second steep.

My Overall Impression

I loved DavidsTea’s Royal White Peony. While this isn’t an inexpensive tea, I do think that Royal White Peony does a great job of being economical. You get quite a bit of tea going by the weight, and the tea itself is delicious. I love that Royal White Peony resteeps well, and that you don’t need to use a lot for a pot of tea. I always enjoy teas that can be resteeped well, and it tastes fantastic – huge bonus! It’s a nice every day tea, and the delicate floral taste to the tea would make an excellent tea to have with an afternoon tea or other sweets.

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

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.

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.

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

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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