This is another tea from the Dammann Freres group tea ordering project Doulton put together. I started laughing when I read the ingredients. This is indeed the fourth tea from Dammann Freres I’ve tried with fig as an ingredient. Fig. 4!
Amazingly, the dry leaves smell like peach even though there is no peach flavored anything identified as an ingredient. I can get fig as well. I had to look up what pitanga is, and if it smells like cherry, I can find that as well. Ironically, what I’m not getting is a whole lot of citrus, which, one would think, would be the main event since there is lemon, bergamot and orange in this. It’s definitely in there, but it isn’t in-your-face.
The aroma of the tea also reminds me, inexplicably, of peach. Through some weird synergy of the ingredients, that’s what I smell. I can pick out the individual fragrances as well, even the rose.
The word that came to me when I was thinking of how to describe the taste is “French” which I realize isn’t very helpful. It’s a complex flavor; like its name, a well-blended perfume that doesn’t have one particular note sing out, but if you’re willing to spend the time putting your mind to each flavor you can find it there and, more interestingly, find how it interacts with the others. That’s what I think of when I think of French perfume.
It’s a tea I think would taste particularly fine on a fall day when the air is just starting to get a crispness in it. It’s not heavy, but it has a depth to it that may feel too heavy for spring and summer consumption.
