Jasmine Black Pearls is an organic black tea offering from DAVIDsTEA. This tea is listed in the Web Specials at DAVIDsTEA‘s online store – with that said, if you want this tea you should act quickly!!
I do like my floral teas, but most often floral is present in white, green and oolong teas rather than blacks. I was doing a tea order with a friend and he spotted Jasmine Black Pearls. I totally didn’t notice this tea when browsing around DAVIDsTEA. I don’t drink much unflavored blacks and own some regular black pearls from another tea company. My eyes just skimmed past assuming its another black pearl tea that looks like bunny nuggets. Though, the combination of jasmine and black tea made me quite curious on how this tea would turn out.
Dry Leaf: Large black and brown striped balls of tea that are quite heavy and tight feeling. The tea smells strongly like jasmine!
The tea attracts an orange owl, wondering who dropped their owl pellets. Eww.
Steeping Instructions: I followed the instructions on the package – 200F for 4 minutes using 3 balls. I added 1 minute per resteep.
What is fun about black pearl teas is watching them unfold!
The tea is a deep, yet glowy woody brown colour with the scent of jasmine.
Taste: Okay, I took a sip right away and found this tea on the harsh bitter side. Great, I thought, this tea would be a pain to drink. I let the tea sit for 5 minutes while I prepared the resteep, as I like to chain drink my resteeps.
5 minutes later, Jasmine Black Pearls really mellowed out. The tea sips down really easy with a fantastic sweet earthy smoothness that tastes like a warm, thick treed forest. The flavor glides with sweet floral jasmine honey notes without any bitterness or dryness. The black tea base is on the lighter side here, it’s not thick or robust, but strong, silent type of black tea. Jasmine Black Pearls has an interesting balance of the strength of black tea with the delicateness of the floral. 4/10 on the Floral-o-meter by the way – the floral is present throughout sip, but is not overpowering. Also, florals do some interesting tricks to the mind – sometimes tasting like fruit. A couple sips I found the jasmine here tasted slightly like dark raisins!
Resteep: Jasmine Black Pearls‘ second steeping came out lighter in black tea earthy wood flavor, but stronger in the floral department – a 5/10. The tea finishes off slightly malty.
Pretty nice quality on the tea leaves too. After the resteep, the balls have broken apart leaving quite large leaves.
Another Resteep: The third steeping of Jasmine Black Pearls has slightly spiced notes of pepper and cinnamon, with a light moderate jasmine floral that is nicely sweet, similar to previous infusions.
Comments: Looking for an easy black tea to drink? Jasmine Black Pearls is very smooth, lightly floral and sweet. This tea would be fantastic during mid work day when you need to relax yet have some black tea caffeine give you an energy hit!
I’m not a huge black tea fan but I quite liked Jasmine Black Pearls due to its smoothness and lack of bitterness. If you are mostly a green/white/oolong drinker wanting to move into black tea territory, Jasmine Black Pearls would be a great choice!
edit bonus:
Jasmine Black Pearls totally reminds me of this EXO-M song! Must be the name, “Black Pearl”.
