More Highlights from DavidsTea’s 2019 Advent Calendar

A few weeks ago, I posted about my top picks from DavidsTea’s 2019 advent calendar. There were a lot of really delicious ones, so it was hard to choose. And as long time followers of my blog are well aware: tea is one of my favorite things.

While I was going back through my notes on each tea, I noticed there weren’t actually too many new teas that weren’t featured in last year’s advent calendar. And by that I mean, just enough new teas to fit into a blog post without feeling like an information overload.

So what the heck! Here’s a look at the new teas from DavidsTea’s 2019 advent calendar that didn’t make it into my top picks. (For this post I’ve simply put the teas in order of appearance rather than ranking by flavor preference.)

Gingerbread Blondie

Gingerbread is one of my favorite flavors. I hadn’t really considered a gingerbread flavored tea until I partook of last year’s tea advent calendar which featured two different gingerbread related flavors. Instantly, I fell in love with the idea. Unfortunately, both of those teas let me down. They simply didn’t have enough gingerbread flavor to feel worthwhile.

So I’ve become highly skeptical of the idea of a gingerbread tea that actually reminds me of the cookies. As such, I didn’t really have high expectations for this particular tea.

I was pleasantly surprised by this tea. It’s a nice, creamy tea – which tend to be among my favorites. It also had more gingerbread flavor than any other gingerbread tea I’ve tasted. Unfortunately, it still didn’t have as much gingerbread flavor as I would have liked, so my search for the perfect gingerbread tea shall continue.

Sweet Tart

The moment I saw the name of this tea, I thought of the sugary treats we used to get in our Halloween bags. Sweet Tarts were my favorite hard (or semi-hard) candies growing up. We didn’t encounter them often. We usually got Smarties instead (which I always thought of as less good Sweet Tarts). And of course my favorite Sweet Tart flavor was the red ones.

The description for this tea describes sour cherry blast. And I will admit it does remind me of eating Sweet Tarts. That said, I do feel like the fruity flavor of this tea is more generically fruity than specifically cherry. Which was disappointing – I would have like a stronger cherry hit with each sip.

Still, it’s a fun tea. I feel like it would be delicious iced on a hot summer day!

Pomegrateful

Confession: I don’t like pomegranate. I learned this when I worked at Starbucks and we rolled out a new frap featuring the flavor. (I can’t remember what it was called, and I imagine it’s long since been retired.) There was an odd and biting acidity to the fruit that I didn’t like. So I was actually tempted to skip this tea.

But I drank two cups of Let it Snow, the eggnog flavored tea, even though I’m not a fan of eggnog. So I figured I should at least give it a try.

I’m glad I did. I didn’t love this tea, but I didn’t hate it either. Instead of making pomegranate the star of this tea, it has a more general fruity flavor with pleasant notes of apple and pineapple. I don’t think I’d go out of my way to drink it, but I definitely wouldn’t turn down a cup if it was offered to me.

Somewhat ironically, the day this tea hit in the advent calendar was a pretty happy day for my husband and I. We had hit a pretty big low and things had just started to turn around when we broke out this tea, which makes it memorable if nothing else. Also it is very red! (I wouldn’t want to see what would happen if it got spilled on a carpet!)

Sunny C

This list might give you the idea that I don’t like fruity teas. I actually do – and orange is one of my favorite tea flavors. (In fact my favorite tea is Lady Grey, which is basically Earl Grey with a bit of orange peel in it.)

Like the Sweet Tart tea, the name of this one instantly summoned memories from my childhood. When I was younger, I used to sleep over at my grandmother’s house every weekend. One of our traditions was that she’d buy a pack of Sunny D singles for me to drink with my lunches (which were Kids Cuisine TV dinners that I, being little, pronounced ‘cue zinie’).

We don’t usually drink Sunny D anymore – it’s a bit too sweet for our tastes. But this tea reminds me of exactly what Sunny D tasted like when I was a kid. It’s sweet, it’s very citrusy and man does it have tang! It’s also refreshing and, again, I think it would be a great drink for a hot summer day.

Organic Super Ginger

This tea can really be summed up in one word: ginger.

I like ginger. I have a lot of teas with ginger in them. I’m drinking DavidsTea’s Organic Ginger Pear while I write this post. So there is absolutely no bias in my review for this tea.

I can honestly say that I have never tasted anything with as much ginger flavor as this. And it’s too much. It’s totally overwhelming. You can offset the massive tang with a bit of milk (oat milk in my case), which makes the tea a little creamier and a tiny bit better balanced. But at the end of the day, it’s ginger all the way.

That said, if you really like ginger, this might be the perfect warming drink for a cold, snowy winter day.

Hot Chocolate

This tea represents an interesting concept. As someone who has recently discovered they are lactose intolerant – and therefore unable to enjoy hot chocolate the way I used to – hot chocolate alternatives have become a hot topic. Sadly, this tea does have chocolate chunks in it, and those chocolate chunks contain milk, so this isn’t going to be a viable long-term alternative.

However, I really enjoyed this tea. I always find it interesting when a tea can replicate the flavor of another drink. DavidsTea has already impressed me with several of their summer iced teas, so I’m not really surprised that this tea delivers.

I initially drank this tea with some marshmallows sprinkled on top (the same way I drink my hot chocolate). Of course, most of the chocolate flavor comes from melted chocolate and cocoa nibs, but it gets its robust flavor from a pu’erh and black tea base.

If you like creamy, comforting teas, this is the tea for you!

Satsuma Spice Cake

This tea almost made it to my top five picks. So it’s certainly my favorite on this particular list. I didn’t know what to expect from the smell, but the tea is actually quite good.

What is satsuma you might ask? Apparently it’s a type of orange – which might explain why I loved this tea so much!

This tea is primarily spicy, but you can bring out the fruit flavor with a little bit of honey or sugar. One interesting thing I noticed while I was drinking this tea was that while the liquid was piping hot, spice dominated the palate. But as the tea cooled, orange became the star of the show.

My apologies if you see a tea here that sparks your interest but didn’t make it to my top five. There weren’t really any bad teas in the 2019 advent calendar, so I’m happy to give each new inclusion a moment in the spotlight.