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It’s supposed to taste like the special type of bread that french people eat at Christmas. My sister bought it for me as a Christmas present because she is living in France at the moment, and because she hears me talk about tea all the time. In a lot of ways it was the perfect present!

I have held off reviewing this tea because I have never tried Pain d’espices (the actual bread) and I don’t know what it’s supposed to taste like. Anyway, it has a lot of cinammon and a few other spices (of the kind that are probably in mulled wine as well) – kind of Christmassy spices with a bit more cinammon than you’d otherwise expect. I can kind of imagine this tea being made into a crumby bakery product, maybe with some marzipan on it. I don’t know whether this French delight usually has marzipan, but my imagination has gone wild! with this tea and the dark coloured loaf I am imagining definitely has marzipan on it!

It’s very pleasant because it has a bit of bite but not so much that you need a cup of water afterwards to calm everything down in there. And it’s comforting. Maybe I should try it with sugar, the cake in my head is sweet, but the tea is not. Hmm…

All gone. What will my cupboard do without this lovely blend of darjeelings?

It’s not bad for a caffeine-free hot drink. Not too sweet, but there is some sweetness. I like the licquorice, seems to be the dominant flavour although there are apparently lots of other herbs in it (according to the package). It’ll do, for 10.30pm on a work night

All gone. I quite like this and it’s an easy teabag, so I might get it again. The only stange thing is that the teabags have very small pores so it doesn’t even let the air in or out until you squeeze it. The bag floats and you wonder whether it’s meant to brew like that

I had a poker night a few weeks ago and a friend came who had never been to visit before. Of course she knows I’m a bit enthusiastic about tea so she had very high expectations and was disappointed with the black tea I offered her, because it wasn’t as strong and powerful as a normal teabag like Tetley or PG Tips.

If she comes again, I will give her this. It’s delicious and is quite strong and good with milk and it’s brilliant. Full of flavour and better than the teabags I mentioned in the last paragraph

That’s the end of the packet, and the end of my white tea until I buy some more. I lost concentration and brewed it for 5 mins at 80 degC rather than 4 mins at 75 degC and you can tell that it has gone a little bit too far. It’s a shame not to finish on the best cup of this tea, but it’s drinkable. Yesterday’s cup (not logged here) was much better. I like white tea, so I’ll get it again, it might be this one but I think I can find something even better

Drank this because http://www.jaydeee.net/pickatea.php. I forgot which of the wonderful steepster people made it, but I think it’s fun.

I’m drinking a lot of Yorkshire tea at work at the moment and the first thing I notice about this is that it has more Indian tea – Assam etc I think – than Yorkshire tea. That’s obvious from the smell. I’m waiting for it to cool down
…5 minutes pass…
Ooh, it’s very tasty. What more can I say? I like it

EllieTea4Me sent me this tea for a tea exchange. I have had it a few times but didn’t really know how to describe it. Then I came home from work and had it next to my Whittard Gunpowder Tea as a comparison. The water was about 88 degC soo a bit hotter than I would have liked, but I couldn’t be bothered to perfect it.

The gunpowder tea was a more rounded flavour and this El Gawhara had less of an initial flavour but a more intense aftertaste. El Gawhara reminded me slightly of sprouts and the gunpowder more of broccoli I suppose. So far the Gunpowder tea is winning, although I do like El Gawhara – and I like sprouts too! Even though the Gunpowder tea had a more rounded flavour the El Gawhara seemed to be filling. I know there won’t be any difference, but El Gawhara seemed more like a food, and that’s what I needed, because I haven’t eaten since lunchtime and I come back from work hungry.

So there you have it, two quite different green teas that I will drink in different situations and I will enjoy them both

The box holding the teabags says it should be brewed with boiling water for 4-5 minutes, but I found 1 minute and 80 degC was perfectly good. Maybe I’ll try their suggestion, after discovering how good my yellow tea is after brewing for 20 minutes, but I always go for a short brew time on sencha, because I find they can get bitter. This was perfectly good, although unsurprisingly not as nice as the loose leaf sencha I have

What an excellent, powerful tea. I’d recommend it to anybody, although it was a bit expensive I thought, so I won’t buy new immediately. I bet I can find something as good but cheaper, but maybe I’m just asking a bit much.

Anyway, it’s all run out now :-(