Rooibos de Noël

This smells delicious, like juicy oranges, and it came out of Dammann Freres’ advent calendar.

I wasn’t a huge fan of it plain, so I added sweetener almost immediately. Then it becomes a creamy orange with a hint of cherry. I get few spices, but again that’s likely from my oversteeping issues of late.

Day 18!

Darn you steepster!! Making it super difficult to find a tea. Most people would give up after it wouldn’t come up in the find a tea search box. The rest would give up after manually searching through all of Dammann’s teas on the site. But no… I am a tea addict (and proud to say it). I will attempt to add the tea, only to find out there is already a tea that exists by the same name that doesn’t come up anywhere else on the site. Whew!

Anyway, this tea is super delish. It quite reminds me of flocon d’epices. I think Dammann must have shares in hubba bubba gum because that is what all of their teas taste like for me. I get minimal rooibos taste. I definitely taste the black cherry and red fruits. I am not getting much ginger bread but the liquor is quite thick. I am getting a bit of clove but it is not too spicey and pleasantly sweet.

Advent calendar day 18.

Rooibos. We meet again.

I have learned that I’m just not much of a fan of herbals. I’ll try them, sure, but I don’t go out of my way to buy them anymore. They just taste off to me now.

This is no exception. The dry leaf smells mostly of orange and clove but it also doesn’t definitively smell of tea. It has a medicinal smell that gets stronger when brewed (I’m thinking this may be due to the cherry.)

The taste (served with no additives) is okay – mostly orange. The mouthfeel is fine. I just really don’t like that medicinal note – I have to breathe through my mouth in order to take a sip.

Yeah, not wowed, but then I didn’t expect to be, really.

good morning! merry christmas!
I have tried SO MANY TEAS over the past few days and haven’t made notes for any, booooo :(
So even though I don’t like posting from my phone I’m gonna try to do it more often.

Yesterday’s movies include 2 documentaries, ‘The Woodmans’ and ‘Cutie and The Boxer’. Both about artists. Both very good.
Today I’m gonna start with ‘56 up’. It’s a series where the filmmaker interviews the same group of British children every 7 years. When I worked at a video store in Philadelphia I got hooked.

I drank this tea last night as I watched an episode of ‘my cat from hell’ at 1am. I had just learned about it at dinner and I was curious. What can I say :)

From yesterday, Christmas

24th and final day of the Dammann Freres advent calendar, finishing only nine months late! I appreciate that they wanted to end with one that’s on theme, and I appreciate that it’s an herbal so I didn’t have to worry about what time of day I drank it or whether I’d already had caffeine. As for the taste itself, though… I don’t know why but it didn’t taste like what it’s supposed to for me. I tasted the woodsy rooibos, a touch of bite from the ginger, and oddly enough cherry and marzipan reminiscent of the Christmas Tea Blanc. But there’s not actually any almond flavor in here, and I didn’t get any of the pepper or orange in the taste. I did get the orange in the dry leaf aroma, but somehow it didn’t transfer into the mug. Overall a bit of an uneventful blend to end on. I didn’t hate it, I just wasn’t too enthused about it.

I’m glad that I tried this calendar but I won’t be ordering it again. The packaging is absolutely gorgeous; I’m definitely going to turn it into gift tags for this year’s holidays. But the teas themselves lean heavily on a black tea base that I don’t love and they tend to favor bergamot, which I also don’t love. I noticed when I was posting tasting notes that a lot of these blends reappear in the advent calendar every year, which makes sense but is also a good indicator that I can expect the same pattern to repeat in the future. So this one is lovely but just not for me. I did really like a lot of the herbal blends, though, so I’ll be filing that info away.

Dammann Frères Advent 2021 – Day 10 because I skipped it yesterday

Another spiced Christmas orange tea (with “gingerbread”). Once again, the orange is the most powerful player. Clove takes a backseat to the ginger and peppercorn here, which is a good call. Rooibos is being itself – a sort of tobacco flower-like quality, and nutty sweet whatever. It’s a nice non-caffeinated blend that suits the season!

My Mom’s opinion: “It’s the smoothest, loveliest tea. Like silk. Even good cold.”

Dammann Frères Advent Day 16 (16-February 2021)

I forgot about this tea until it was pretty cold, but it’s still tasty! I’m getting mostly orange here and I quite enjoy orange and rooibos. I’ve nothing to complain about here!

Advent 16.

Smells and tastes of bubblegum and orange-cherry-hint of clove-cola. The commonality between the 3 DF teas I’ve had so far that have a cola/bubblegum note is that they all have gingerbread flavoring (the other 2 being Flocons d’Épices and Carcadet de Noël).

The rooibos is a bit woody-sweet and drying, but overall the wateriness of the body doesn’t allow for all the flavors to really shine. Boring, yes, but good enough.

Sipdown (254)

Made this and then forgot about it while I did schoolwork. So its cold and also just not a favorite. It’s a Christmas tea so it has a similar profile to Merry Cookie. However, the rooibos base comes through a touch medicinal and then the orange is very sweet making this like an odd and artificial orange candy drink.