362 Tasting Notes

77
drank Pomme d'Amour by Dammann Frères
362 tasting notes

This sounds so irresistible. French caramel apples in tea. I never had any caramel apple, ever, but that just made it much more appealing – it was the idea of it, caramel and apple, oh yay. It really was something I wanted to try, particularly since I have recently been impressed by the first Dammann tea I tried (Paul et Virginie, that was). So when Ysaurella so kindly shared this with me, yay, thank you so much again Ysaurella!

I could not resist trying this before getting really better from the cold I had, so my first teapot was not really a fair trial (a waste, but could not resist). And here goes my second attempt – I was distracted by something else and brew it just a smidgeon too long. No harm done, still extremely drinkable, just adding the data point that it´s probably much better with shorter steep times.

The dry leaf smells totally divine – not like apple nor caramel, but some indescritable blend, fruity and spicy and yes caramelley. The liquor smells and tastes differently. Like apples yes, and this tea left me quite baffled. I think part of the problem is that never having any caramel apple I did not know what to expect. For example, yesterday I tried another marvelous sample from Ysaurella, Rouge d´Automne which tastes wonderfully of marrons glacés – which taste very differently from any other dish of chestnuts! If I had never had had marrons glacés I think I would not have known what to make of that taste. And I get this feeling from Pomme D´Amour, like I can not recognize what it is about. It is very nice indeed, but a stranger somehow!

Preparation
195 °F / 90 °C 5 min, 45 sec
Angrboda

Oh, I love mixing caramel and apple flavoured teas for this effect! Half and half of Kusmi’s caramel and their apple is one of the best combinations I’ve ever done. :) (I’ve found, though, that LPdT’s Toffee, which fills the same slot as the caramel in my mind, doesn’t work half so well with that combination.)

cteresa

It is a good idea indeed. And mixing teas, I got to dare that one of these days!

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90

This was from a sample swap with Ysaurella, oh many thanks for the generosity, this is lovely. It really tastes just like marrons glacés, well with maybe some vanilla.

A couple of random notes because can´t really focus too much but before I forget it:

I thought I was being generous at scooping this up, but I should have been even more generous at dosage. Not too hot and not too long (for a black tea) seems perfectly suited to this – enough to bring all the flavours of the marrons and some body for the tea underneath and not a hint of bitterness or bad manners from the tea. And it is rather sweet on its own. It might be better with some milk, must try but when I brew it stronger. This is to my mind an afternoon, or even an evening tea. And like its name, oh such an autumnal thing. Weird of me to impose such rules to just a tea, that there is a time of the year and a time of the day for it, but this is it. It really really tastes just like, intensely like, marrons glacés. Just repeating, but I kept thinking it from first to last sip. On the other hand, marrons glacés do not quite taste like roasted chestnuts or what I sometimes call a “chestnuty” note to some chinese black teas. Chestnuts roasting for me are one of the ultimate Autumn smells and I even divide mentally into different smells flavours – raw chestnuts (can be very good if of a variety where the the inner peel gets loose easily), the smoky charcoaly smell of chestnut sellers´s carts on the street, the little almost burnt bits on some street bought chestnuts, the different taste to home oven roasted chestnuts. Marrons glacés are lovely, but a different kind of chestnut. And not one I got any emotional ties to – but maybe that is lucky, if I had any strong feelings for marrons glacés I would have ordered somehow a tin of this before finishing my cup! It really is that amazing at being a marron glacé tea.
Preparation
200 °F / 93 °C 4 min, 15 sec
Ysaurella

the vanilla base is really present in this blend to my taste as present as in the marrons glacés.
I am very glad you liked it so much ! it is one one my Sunday tea ! Each Sunday morning I have a cup of pleine lune + a cup of Prince Igor OR Rouge d’Automne.

cteresa

it is lovely! A perfect cup for a sunday indeed!

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43

Beware of all of Twinings´s pink box “fruity” teas. They are all hibiscus based, all sour, and almost all almost tasteless apart from a musty kind of smell. The best of the lot is IMO Raspberry and Echinacea. But this is at least drinkable – which is far more than I can say about for example Blackcurrant, Ginseng and Vanilla or the Cranberry, Raspberry and Elderflower.

Main flavor is of course hibiscus! And then a note of paper, which for some reason I get more strongly in these twinings no-string teabags, Beneath that another hibiscus note and it´s acid and sour. And second fiddle to all those, then maybe a bit of strawberry. I don´t like it – though admittedly it just might the second best of these Twinings fruit “infusions”.

Preparation
Boiling
LiberTEAS

ahh… hibiscus and paper. This tisane certainly seems promising!

cteresa

Scary thing is not even the worse – at least 2 or 3 of the other Twinings pink tisanes are even worse. And they keep on selling.

cteresa

worst, I mean, urgh. I had english teachers at some time in the past which are not at fault for this sort of thing!

Scheherazade

I don’t like any of these either, really. My least favourite is probably Strawberry and Mango. It smells okay, but it’s completely tasteless. The one I find most palatable is Blackberry and Nettle, which has a reasonably nice pepperiness to it, but I don’t drink that much these days.

TheTeaFairy

Sounds pretty bad! I’ll stick to their Earl and Lady Grey which are pretty decent!

cteresa

I am very fond of lady grey, prince of wales and a few of their other teas – it is just these, their pink hibiscus tisanes that I think are (mostly) awful!

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83
drank Homemade chai mix by Cteresa
362 tasting notes

Don´t know how I should list this, but here goes, in case anybody else is thinking of doing their own chai blends. I made my first batch and I am impressed, it turned out pretty much to my taste and much better than I thought it would.

My favorite chai so far is Mariage Frères´ Chandernagor, a mix of just four spices – cinnamon, cardamom, cloves and pepper; all balanced in a way that seems perfection to me. I tried to be inspired by that, and remembered that Chandernagor is a tea which I was dubious about because dry it smelled too strongly of cloves. I considered that a tip to add a little bit more of cloves than my nose would think OK.

The recipe:
the base: 50 grams of plain, strong black tea. I used some golden Pekoe tea from the Azores which I had at hand, and was probably already pretty old. It´s a pretty malty tea and I think it worked very well. Assam is probably more canonical and what I would use when I run out of this Gorreana black tea.

the spices – I used seeds of 12 green cardamom pods, half a teaspoon of ground cloves (whole cloves would be better, I would use 12 but I did not have them at hand. Ground spices will probably impart a lot more flavour than the same volume of whole spices so I went with my nose), 12 black pepper grains and then cinnamon, hard to measure or describe. I used some very sweet, very thin cinnamon bark broken in pieces with fingers (very thin!) or knife tip, and a smidgeon of ground cinnamon just because. I pounded it a bit in a pestle till broken up. I mixed the spices with the tea, put it in a sealed pot and waited about a few days, shaking it now and then.

Brew it chai style, a generous helping on simmering milk with a bit of brown sugar, and it was NOT BAD at all. Maybe not quite the best chai ever but much more to my taste than a few other chai mixes I have tried so far. So don´t be afraid to try your own chai mixes and be pretty conservative about the ingredients.

Preparation
Boiling 7 min, 45 sec
charab

hmmm, intriguing. Need to try making some, since it could be fun to compare both at the same time; the favorite chai and one’s own mix. Would also be an entertaining (or just plain ridiculous but hey) adventure to try to make some chai-ish mixture with chinese tea base. Lapsang with spices…hmm. Tempting.

cteresa

Oh do try it, it´s lots of fun, specially if you (that is, me) is into cooking and has good quality spices.

It was a lot of fun – and chai is one of those things, I think each of us has a different perfect chai!

Hallieod

I still haven’t had time to brew it chai style and despite that it was great. Hope I can remember the name of this to search. :P

Hallieod

Hope you don’t mind my editing – you deserve credit for this and it makes it easier to find.

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93
drank Ginseng Guardian by Yumchaa
362 tasting notes

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73
drank Kashmir Tchai by Kusmi Tea
362 tasting notes

Warning: brewed this up in milk, with brown sugar, simmering for about 8 minutes or so. Done with water the “proper” way it will probably be different.

I am rather on a quest for chai, more chai – I should probably just bite the bullet and go buy some more Chandernagor while I can find it. Chandernagor has been so far my one perfect chai: just 4 spices cinnamon cardamom cloves and pepper and it seems to work oh so well for me.

But I had a chance to get 50 grams of Kashmir Tchai for a not too pricey amount and had to try it. It´s not bad, I think it might be one of my favorite Kusmi blends so far, but it´s not quite up to being my ideal chai.

On individual taste notes – there is fennel or anise or liquorice or something in here. I don´t quite hate it at these concentrations but it´s there and making me notice it at every sip. I don´t like anise-liquorice so not actually sure how strong it is, or it is just me focusing immediately on something I do not like.

And there is a lot of green cardamom. Cinnamon is there as well but not too noticeable, I think I would have preferred if the roles of cinnamon and cardamom where reversed. The bay leaf is very noticeable in the dry mix, and adds something interesting in my opinion. The other two spices I can not identify on their own – googling they are ginger and cloves.

There is also no heat to this mix, no pepper or chillies or anything of the sort.

The tea base is a bit weaker than usual for a chai – it´s strangely enough for a chai and one called after Kashmir, a chinese black tea base. If there is a place for Assam, it´s on chai mixes with spices! But I think this is meant to be a pretty mild innocuous chai. Not bad, but not awesome.

Preparation
205 °F / 96 °C 8 min or more

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66
drank Three Ginger by Pukka
362 tasting notes

I am getting a cold, so not a good time to be enjoying any new teas. But this was the exception, ginger tea usually really helps my throat. Fresh ginger tea is the most effective but that takes work and when getting a cold all I want is to toss a teabag into a cup of boiling water. Twinings´ Ginger and Lemon has been pretty useful at being that so far. But a while ago I was given this Pukka sample, which I was saving for the right occasion.

It´s OK to good. It´s not too spicy, nothing comparable to the kick of fresh ginger, but that makes it easier to keep drinking. It does have some kick, a milder aftertaste. It supposedly contains liquorice, a pet hate of mine, but I can not really spot it. I think I can spot the taste of the turmeric, and I don´t really like it, that note tastes sorts of muddy to me.

Am I going to buy this? Probably not if I can find the Twinings one. I like better the taste of the Twinings, it is a bit more sinus clearing hot and it is also probably cheaper (to be confirmed when I find it). This Pukka tea feels stupidly expensive here to me – around 5 euros for an admittedly very pretty box of 20 foil-sealed teabags. Only advantage the Pukka tea has to me is precisely the portability and convenience of those sealed teabags.

Preparation
Boiling 4 min, 45 sec
Ysaurella

Get well soon Cteresa

cteresa

Thank you!

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66
drank St. Petersburg by Kusmi Tea
362 tasting notes

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46

No notes yet. Add one?

Preparation
190 °F / 87 °C 2 min, 30 sec

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80

This is my first Dammann Fréres tea and I am quite impressed, this is delightful.

I noticed the other day and pointed in another tasting note that I had nothing less than 4 well know tea blends, from different blenders, all with the same notes – red fruits and caramel (and two of them added bergamot to it); and all those teas are among the most popular for each of their blenders. I am talking of Harney´s Paris, Kusmi´s St Petersbourg, Mariage Frères´ Marco Polo and this very one. And it´s easy to see why it´s so popular: it works, the caramel gives something to the red fruits and vice versa. The Fred and Ginger of taste pairings? He gives her class, she makes him sexy.

Of those 4 teas mentioned I like this better than Paris and St Petersbourg. It´s the fruitiest of those 4 with the most recognizable, juiciest fruit scents and for once I can detect clearly all the fruits mentioned – the raspberry, the cherry and even the strawberry. The vanilla is also quite noticeable in the scent, the caramel gives it an extra depth, and I found it particularly noticeable in the aftertaste of the tea. The tea base used is a mix of Chinese and Ceylon teas, and it´s very right for these flavours – it´s not too strong though or at least not as I brewed it (relatively cold (90C) for not too long (3-4 minutes) with a generous scoop of tea). I think this is definitely an afternoon tea. It was very quick to disappear!

Preparation
195 °F / 90 °C 4 min, 0 sec
Ysaurella

This is one of the DF i didn’t taste yet. I can get it very easily at my tea shop around the corner.

cteresa

I am soooooo soooo envious! Corner shop, ah, the envy is deep.

I got a shop which sells this and I think they are going to stop carrying it. And they got about 5 different flavours, only two where things I was finding interesting. I was considering Jardin Bleu as well but expiry date was this very month.

This PV is nice, though not an extraordinary tea – I think it might be a great tea to give or serve people which are not usually tea drinkers

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Profile

Bio

Inconstant tea drinker – I mostly drink tea when not too hot. I hang around steepster much more frequently in (northern hemisphere) cold season. Experimenting with cold steeping, for summer.

- Teas -

I like all sorts of tea, flavoured and unflavoured, though I am picky.

I am one of those people who actually loves Lapsang Souchong. I am not crazy about Earl Grey, in general. I don´t quite get Darjeeling teas, but I am exploring.

I like rooibos, though not all bases. I loathe hibiscus. I do not like fennel/liquorice/anise in blends or teas with chicory. I am picky about what I consider true cinnamon.

As you can probably tell from my cupboard, the brands I find more interesting right now are Mariage Fréres and Thé-o-Dor.

I am always willing to try anything new. I am now particularly interested in single origins.

Location

Portugal

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