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This tin was gifted to me and my wife by a friend. Even though we have a Palais des Thés shop 10 minutes away from our home, I must admit that I don’t recall ever tasting any of their teas. And so, yesterday afternoon, my wife and I sat down for an afternoon tea tasting and opened this green tea.

What a nice surprise when we opened the tin! The leaves are beautifully long and unbroken. They’re mixed with bits of fruit and curled up in the nicest way – not saying that other teas are ugly but these leaves look so regular? Their smell made us think of candy and cake, it’s very sweet which is probably due to the citrus and ginger bits. The marine side of the tea is quite nicely combined with the citrus and ginger, there’s no one aroma overshadowing the others, it’s a pretty elegant mix. Both the citrus and ginger seem authentic; nothing to do with other teas I’ve tasted in the past (cough Terre d’oc cough).

Brewed this for 3 minutes. It has a cloudy aspect, in a good way – the cup in which I drank it was grey, it looked like water I had fished out of a lost pond deep inside a thousand-year-old forest. Like a moss infusion. But in a good way! It scratches a very specific itch.
The brew itself smells like a citrus cake with a ginger spin. My wife thought it was the opposite – a ginger cake with a hint of citrus. We agreed on the cake element though, this tea is incredibly creamy, almost butter-y, both in smell and taste. The marine element of the green tea is still very present though. Overall a blend that works well.

The first sip was incredibly sweet, in a nice way, because of the blend quality. It’s not too sweet and it didn’t bother either of us. My wife noted how the orange in the citrus brings that sweetness to the tea. It definitely brings some balance to it, as well.

In my opinion, this blend is a great one for both people who aren’t huge fans of the marine side of green tea and need some aroma with it, and for people who, on the contrary, love green tea for what it is and are looking for a well-blended, good quality and interesting citrus-and-ginger spin on it. A previous review of this tea mentions the Kusmi green tea one, which I will try to taste before I run out of the Palais des Thés one, as a comparison.

I would suggest drinking this tea on its own, without any biscuits or sweets, because of the blend’s own sweetness. If you usually like your tea sweetened I would advise trying it without any sugar first.

Rating it at 76 according to my own scale – rating may be edited as I keep tasting more green teas.