Almond Green Tea (Thé Vert à l'Amande)

This tea has an alarming almond aroma (alarming in a good way, almost divine). Every time I open the tin I am inspired to bake almond infused cakes and cookies. I call this tea my gateway tea… only it leads me to fiend for pastries. Parties and more tea. :)

I was surprised by this tea. Eventho I cannot pick out much of an almond type taste I know what I like and I like this tea.

I can taste a sweetness to it but not a nutty flavor. The nose almost has a florally-mint to it but not quite.

Regardless it’s tasty.

Just picked this up today at a little shop styling itself as a European market. The scent of this tea is definitely sweet marzipan, but the tea is not sweet. It has a hint of almond, with a basic green tea background. Very nice!

Good lord, people. I have been bound and bleeding determined to get the perfect steep out of this, to get as close as humanly possible to making the delicious scent of this tea match the actual taste of it. I kept getting cups that just weren’t cutting it.

I finally went out and bought a tea thermometer to make sure I had the temperature just right. I’ve also been fiddling with the right steeping device – my regular strainers kept letting bits of tea through that I could never quite strain out, so they kept steeping and soured the cup, but the disposable filters didn’t let the tea expand properly. So this morning I basically combined the best of the two – I tucked an open tea ball (well, an acorn-shaped strainer) into a reusable bamboo filter bag, so the tea could expand without any bits escaping. I put the tea in at 160 degrees and gave it exactly three minutes.

After all that, I’m calling this a success! I’m definitely getting the most almond flavor out of this of any prior steep. It’s still definitely more of a green tea flavor than I was hoping for, given that the scent suggests you’ll be drowning in marzipan. The almond is there, though. I think I just keep expecting that teas will be naturally sweet and then I’m put off when they’re not. Maybe I just need to admit defeat and start adding sugar already.

It pains me to admit the success of this green tea steeping method (open tea ball + reusable filter bag) because it’s such a pain in the butt, but I think it genuinely does allow for the best cup since the leaves get to expand properly but there are no bits left floating around to keep steeping. Green tea, thou art the cruelest mistress!

Wow strong smell !
Nice taste, although the taste of green tea is very faint. Very good with something sweet :)

Marzipan with vegetal green tea. My main hangup is the actual tea doesn’t have a lot of heft in the face of that marzipan flavour. My mind keeps wanting to add salt to turn the dessert nuts into savoury ones (but it would possibly also turn the veggies into seaweed)!

Oh, well. There’s still a lot to enjoy about this one. It won’t be hard to drink the rest of the sampler tin up! Will play around with the temperature next time.

I’ve found the quality of this tea varies quite a bit. One time, I ordered tea bags online and it was kind of bland and stale. More recently, I ordered the loose leaf version and it’s been excellent. So, I wouldn’t write this tea off to quickly.

This tea has a very rich almond flavor, a bit like almond cake, which I very much enjoy. Overstepped, it develops more of a vegetal or even grassy note, which doesn’t fit it as well.

Today, it came out a little bit weak. I’ll fiddle with it more in the future.

We have to be careful with this capricious tea. I am steeping it at 75’c for 2 minutes. I like the smell very much (even if it seems like they just dabbed a few drops of almond essence into grassy green tea). The almond smell is much more subtle once steeped.

Had to add the French name to this tea, otherwise I’d never find it and we’d get duplicates. Tried it both hot and cold, and I much preferred it hot. Like an almond marzipan, if you’re into that sort of thing? Not really my cup of tea.

Left boiled water to cool for an hour and then used it to steep this tea. Yes, the teapot was still hot to the touch, so I thought it about right.

Wonderful green tea : the smell of the loose tea is pure nostalgy for me, and for once, this is only confirmed when drinking it! Normally green tea can be quite “boring” to me, but the almonds make it fun!