78 Tasting Notes

80
drank Oolong Citrons by Dammann Frères
78 tasting notes

Dammann Frères Advent 2021 – Day 9

Catching up on my advent calendar after a 3-day hiatus. This Oolong Citrons is a hit for me which is somewhat of a surprise because I am in love with Noel a Venise with its lemon caramel meringue pie vibe, and I thought I would sorely miss the caramel in this tea. But no. It was a lovely cup of buttery lemon goodness. It’s a cross between a lemon tarte and limoncello. I enjoyed it very much!

Flavors: Butter, Lemon, Pastries, Smooth

Preparation
190 °F / 87 °C 4 min, 30 sec
gmathis

Oolong isn’t often my first choice, but lemony stuff is. This sounds delightful!

EmmaM

It really is. I’m with you on the Oolong. I don’t dislike them but I don’t crave them either. But I liked this one there are a couple of teas from Lupicia that are really delicious too.

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85

Dammann Frères Advent 2021 – Day 6
I make this amaretto chocolate torte and this tea always makes me think of it. But while I make my torte with rich dark chocolate, this tea is all about smooth milk chocolate. But I still get the delicious almond mixed in there which I love and the feeling that I’m drinking a delicious dessert.

My torte is heaven for chocolate lovers, but much too rich and concentrated for anyone else. This tea is in a different lane. It’s light, silky, and soft-spoken. It’s delicate. Less “in-your-face chocolate” and more almond chocolate ganache. It took me a few times to fall in love with it but now I love it!

Flavors: Almond, Amaretto, Chocolate, Cocoa, Smooth

Preparation
190 °F / 87 °C 4 min, 30 sec
gmathis

That’s a lovely description. Sounds so elegant!

ashmanra

Another for the list!

EmmaM

I hope you like this one! It’s a great cold-weather tea.

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77

Dammann Frères Advent 2021 – Day 3
This is a tea for cherry tea lovers. Dry it’s full-on cherry. It smells like cherry candy rather than cough syrup, but it’s a lot of cherry. Brewed, it’s a lovely combination of cherry and bitter almond. I don’t really get ginger or gingerbread. It’s a lovely cup and if I loved cherry teas, it probably would register higher for me.

And sure enough, my husband continues to love this one. He loves Mariage Freres’s Sakura The Blanc which is another white cherry tea, so I’d love for him to compare the two. Mariage Freres’s version is insanely expensive, and this could be a good option.

Flavors: Almond, Candy, Cherry

Preparation
175 °F / 79 °C 5 min, 30 sec
ashmanra

Gurman’s in Dublin has a good White Cherry tea. They ship to the US but I am not sure if it would be more economical than this. (Their tea called Magic is amazing, too.)

EmmaM

Thank you for that! We’ve been dreaming of going to Scotland and Ireland when our youngest goes off to college. If I can’t order it, I will make sure to add it to my “must-do” list.

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70
drank Granola d'Hiver by Dammann Frères
78 tasting notes

Dammann Frères Advent 2021 – Day 4
This tea and I have a misunderstanding. It smells of toast, pecans, and maple syrup and I want to love it. But once brewed, it’s a faint echo of what I want it to be. I don’t know if I brewed it at too low of a temperature or if I had a weak batch, but it doesn’t live up to its promise for me. Maybe I was expecting too much. I was hoping for a raisin nut bread toasted with a drizzle of maple syrup and I got a bit of sweet popcorn or rice cake with a hint of pecan. I liked it much better in previous years. It’s good but it’s mehhh for me this year.

This is a tea I only get to taste when I get the advent calendar so I will have to wait another year to give it another chance.

Flavors: Maple Syrup, Pecan, Popcorn, Toast

Preparation
185 °F / 85 °C 4 min, 30 sec

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90
drank Framboise Chocolat by Lupicia
78 tasting notes

Love at first taste! This tea was added to our Lupicia order at the last minute because my husband and daughter absolutely love Lupicia’s Strawberry Puer and I thought I might like this one better since raspberries are my favorite berries. The 50 grams disappeared in a flash and as a mea culpa for drinking it all, my better half bought me 250g for my birthday.

It reminds me of the Weight Watchers chocolate-covered raspberry ice cream pops. So good! Lupicia is so good at capturing the taste of fruit in a way that feels natural and they sure know how to make chocolate teas. No tartness at all here. Just sweet raspberries and melted chocolate… a great dessert tea!

Flavors: Chocolate, Raspberry, Smooth

Preparation
Boiling 2 min, 30 sec

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80

Dammann Frères Advent 2021 – Day 2
Every time I drink this tea, it’s a bit like drinking a raspberry jolly rancher. Not your Fruit Punch-type Jolly Rancher. Definitely bright raspberry and a little bit of passion fruit. Like an elevated Jolly Rancher :) Or like a tropical raspberry jam.

It’s admittedly very tart, but I add some stevia to it to mellow out the tartness of the hibiscus, and I let it cool which brings out the fruit. I like it much better that way, than steaming hot. This is a fruit tea that would be delicious iced in the summer. It kind of begs for a summer day in the backyard.

I love raspberry teas and my daughter loves this one, but it’s a hard pass for my husband. All that hibiscus doesn’t work for him.

Flavors: Jam, Passion Fruit, Raspberry, Tropical

Preparation
Boiling 6 min, 0 sec

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82
drank My Gingerbread by Dammann Frères
78 tasting notes

Dammann Frères Advent 2021 – Day 1
Advent calendar time! This year 4 of us in the family are doing it. My husband and daughter as well as my sister-in-law. Should be fun to compare since we all have such different tastes.

This tea was a complete surprise as I don’t care for gingerbread cookies at all. But this was nice! It’s the scent that convinced me to try it. It smelled delicious! This is not a shy tea! I got orange, spices, and almonds; and some sort of cake or baked sweet bread. I might sound crazy but it reminded me of an orange-themed carrot cake with lots of white frosting.

Once brewed, the ginger was front and center but I didn’t find it overpowering. It’s definitely very prominent, but behind it, came delicious orange, almond, and winter spices. Pretty spot-on for what I imagine a gingerbread cake might taste like, rather than a gingerbread snap. The almond is probably why my mind kept going back to cake or baked holiday bread. I couldn’t really find the raisins, but they might have been hidden by the little bit of stevia I added to my tea.

All in all, I really liked this one. It was a fun way to start the month of December. I enjoyed my cup and look forward to my daughter’s cup since she wouldn’t give this one a try. Ginger is not her thing and she wasn’t going to risk it. On the other hand, my husband loved his. But that makes sense since one of his favorite teas is Mariage Freres’ Christmas Orange. It most definitely made his “Buy List” so I will get to try it again. I have a feeling this one might grow on me…

Flavors: Almond, Bread, Cake, Ginger, Maple Syrup, Orange

Preparation
190 °F / 87 °C 4 min, 30 sec

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86

Positively delicious! Not sure how it ended up in my cupboard, but I have been on a rampage to finish all my teas before my Dammann Freres and Lupicia orders come in and there it was. Love the creamy, smooth, full-on vanilla flavor. It reminded me of the vanilla you get in a french flan or in creme patissiere. Pure deliciousness. Can’t wait to try more from this brand!

Flavors: Butter, Cream, Sweet, Vanilla

Lexie Aleah

This one unfortunately always seems to be out of stock on the site.

EmmaM

I finally found it at Fresh Market. Not sure if you have one of those near you…

Lexie Aleah

Unfortunately, we don’t have one but Amazon seems to carry this one. :)

EmmaM

So glad! Too many teas and not enough time! Lol

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82

This is one of those perfect fall teas. I ignore it all year only to come back to it every October as soon as the weather turns colder.

It’s very smooth and clean to me, as if Dammann had managed to bottle up the exact taste of street-roasted chestnuts —definitely not candied chestnuts. I only get the faintest hint of vanilla and the gentle nuttiness of the oolong. It’s lovely!

Flavors: Chestnut, Nutty, Vanilla

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82
drank Noël à Paris by Dammann Frères
78 tasting notes

2020 Advent Calendar – Day 22. Finally caught up with this advent calendar! And just in time too. This one smells very much like cough syrup but the almonds show up beautifully in the cup. Thank goodness. It’s still very much about the cherry but the artificial medicinal cherry flavoring disappears and I get this almondy, cherry pie. I get some “pain d’epice” vibe from it but I can’t say that I can pick out the individual winter-ish spices.

It would have been a great Thanksgiving morning tea to put you in the mood for a fun day of cooking and a hint at desserts to come. It did go down easy (and fast)

Flavors: Almond, Cherry, Marzipan, Overripe Cherries, Spices

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Profile

Bio

I started drinking tea in 2018 when a friend introduced me to flavored black teas. Since then, I have developed a bit of a tea addiction. I never want to be without the teas I love, but I’m perpetually compelled to try new ones…

I started with French tea companies like Mariage Freres, Dammann Freres, Kusmi, Nina’s, and TheOdor, because I’m French and it makes me feel closer to home, but I would love to find tea companies I love as much on this side of the Atlantic.

I’m partial to dessert teas and in terms of flavors, I adore almond, pistachio, biscuit, nutty types, as well as caramel, cream, cake, vanilla, toffee, chocolate, and cookies. For me, it’s all about drinking my dessert!!! I also like fruity teas like peach, melon, mango, raspberry, strawberry, figs, and even grapefruit flavored teas. I am discovering more floral teas and testing the waters there, but I don’t care for earl greys or chai. I have not expanded into unflavored teas yet, but maybe one day.

For full disclosure I like my tea with a little sugar/sweetener.

Tea ratings: (I’m not a tough customer and I don’t have a very sophisticated palate.)

96-100: Pure deliciousness and all-time favourite teas.

90-95: Love love love. Delicious teas I reach for all the time.

80-89: Good to great teas I’d drink any day of the week.

75-79: Good teas that I would be happy to drink from time to time.

70-74: Teas that are just ok for me. They’re not bad teas, but not my preference.

60-69: Maybe good for someone else but definitely not my thing.

50-59: Drinkable

1-49: Just no.

Location

North Carolina, USA

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