Fru P Kaffe & The

As you may have seen on the discussion boards, I recently missed out on a chance to taste this new-fangled sparkling tea product. Not wine, not cider, not tea, but sort of all things at once, or something. Fru P replied to my comment on the Book of Faces that if they had any left she would save some for me, but of course this was not possible.

I did take the opportunity to stock up on that awesome vanilla that they have (Sil, if you are still interested in trying it, please message me. I have loads now.) and I also bought some of her caramel flavoured black. This is another highly coveted flavour for me in tea. I love it when it occurs naturally and I love it when it’s added artificially. Unlike vanilla, though, I’ve met several caramel flavoured teas that fit my requirements exactly.

Anyway, I had to try this one as well, of course. I don’t even know how I missed it the first time I was in there. It’s not like me to not even look for it.

I had a whiff of the leaves before steeping and both that aroma and the aroma of the cup now steaming under my nose are extremely promising. It’s all sweet and butter-y caramel. There is even a smidge of something nutty to it. A sweet kind of nut, like an almond. All heavy and creamy.

The flavour, at the first sip, struck me as a bit thin and a bit… twig-y, sort of. I don’t know, I just got this image of twigs in my head. It’s not immediately delivering on the promise of the aroma.

Some would say, ‘try adding a little sugar’ or ‘try adding a little milk’, to which say a vehement no. If a tea has to have additives in order to taste right, it’s just not a good tea. Additives, for me, kills the tea. Additives are murder. In other words, I rarely actually like a tea very much after adding stuff to it, especially sugar. I can deal with milk but prefer not to have it. Sugar or other sweeteners, however… I do not understand how some of you can even get it down. So, no. I’m not tampering with the tea and nothing you say can ever convince me otherwise.

Instead I’m going to let it cool down a bit, and there it is. There is a caramel flavour there now, but it’s still not as rich as in the aroma and it’s sort of hovering under a water-y surface.

It helps a bit as it cools and develops a quite nice nutty aftertaste, but it still never gets really caramel-y. I suspect this requires some fiddling with the steeping process. So far, though, I’m not really convinced.

On completely unrelated note, this car (https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/944415_10151616377506122_932531436_n.jpg) is driving around in the town where I live. No, Steepsterites. Your eyes are not decieving you.

Hello Steepsterites! No, I haven’t forgotten you. I have in fact been around and reading most days. Just been a bit busy. Husband started his new job shortly before I posted the last post, and at the moment his commute is absolutely horrid. There is a car purchase in his near future which will cut his commute time in half or there abouts. So as it is, he’s home pretty late every day and I don’t really see very much of him.

Now, however, I’ve got a long holiday of about 2½ weeks in front of me, and there should be more time to keep up with you lot as well.

Project Ceylon!

Yes, I’ve made it through the samples from Nothing But Tea. What I have left now is this one, which I got in that delicacies shop that shares my name, and by coincidence discovered that it wasn’t actually a generic blend as the name would have me believe. I’ve also got my two Chaplon Ceylons, Galle and Uva Highlands, which I want to revisit for Project Ceylon as well. That’s going to be difficult, especially when it comes to Galle, because I’ve had about half the tin so far and I’ve started to know it pretty well. That makes it harder to analyse, I think, because I know what I’m expecting to be there and it affects my experience of the cup I’m actually having. Bit like how I avoid reading other people’s notes on a tea while I’m writing my own post.

I suppose with Galle and Uva Highlands, those are so relatively new in my cupboard that I could just find the first post I’ve done of each and have that count towards the reference map, but somehow that feels like cheating.

Now, back on topic. This one comes from Pettiagala and since it was a coincidence that I spotted that name on her bag in the shop, I’ve had to find my own information on it by way of Google and Teh Interwebz. As far as I could determine, it’s a high grown tea, grown at about 1500 meters above the surface of the sea.

The aroma of the dry leaf has a bit of wood and a bit of malt, and with a touch of something floral on top of it all. I can’t find any of the leather-y notes that appear to have been more or less universal in the Ceylon teas I’ve tried so far. This doesn’t worry me too much, though, because the scent of the dry leaf have been completely difference from how it presents itself when brewed before.

So after steeping, I’m on the lookout for that leather-y note, but once again I can’t find it. It’s still a bit floral and a bit malty, and it has also gain a hint of grain and a good deal of sweetness. That sweetness strikes me as somewhere in between honey and caramel. Neither one nor the other, but with elements of both.

Judging from that aroma, I’m counting on the flavour to really pay up, but unfortunately the leather-y note is still missing. A bit malty, a bit floral and a bit grainy, just like the aroma. But the leather-y note just isn’t there and there doesn’t appear to be any other notes in there that takes up that particular place in the flavour profile, which just makes the whole thing taste a bit thin.

Shame that.

This one comes off as pedestrian at best. It’s a good enough tea, and the taste is pleasant. It’s by no means a bad tea. It’s worse than that. It’s just kinda boring…

Reference map: http://goo.gl/maps/0LJ8r

Cherry flavoured black teas seem to be few and far between around these parts and I’ve always thought that was a shame because I really wanted one. So when I was in Fru P’s the other day and I saw this one, I spontaneously jumped on it and got 50 grams. I’ve been crazy much looking forward to trying it, but was trying to control myself a bit. Otherwise I’d have had it at five minutes to bed time last night. :D

The aroma of the dry leaf is definitely cherry. Very recognisable as such, but there’s something else in there too which I can only say reminds me of marzipan. I don’t think that’s actually really it, but that’s the closest I can get. It smells like cherry sweeties and the sort of warm cherry sauce that we eat with the Christmas rice pudding around these parts.

After steeping it smells a little less like sweeties, and there’s a certain harsh-ish note to it which makes me think it’s been very strongly flavoured. Like the vanilla one was. I wonder if these are actually completely freshly blended for her shop and that’s why the flavouring seems so strong. That perhaps they haven’t had time to settle and air out the excess yet. I don’t know. I suppose we shall just see over time. I’ll definitely be revisiting the vanilla one, so I’m sure I’ll notice if that one suddenly takes a nose-dive on perfection.

Cherries, when I eat them, always seem to surprise me by how dark and grey-ish they actually taste. It’s like I keep imagening something more tart-ish and cranberry-y for some reason, and then I got surprised when they actually just taste like cherries. I love cherries, but I don’t get them often. We can only get them in summer around here and even then I don’t always buy them at the shop. They go mouldy SO QUICKLY, cherries do, so I’m always rather picky about whether or not to get them.

Like cherries, this cup surprised me. Cherry just isn’t really much of a forefront flavour, so at first I just get a sip of base tea, and then that is immediately followed by the flavouring. I think the base here is either Ceylon or a mild-ish Chinese. It has a certain amount of grain to it and a bit of malty notes as well.

There isn’t really any time to properly try to analyse the flavour though, because the cherry comes in and floods the whole thing. The aftertaste is pure cherry.

I’m not picking up any of that sweetie or marcipan-y notes in the flavour itself, but there is a hint of marcipan on the aftertaste. It suits the cherry quite nicely, really.

Cherry sauce and marcipan. I’m getting in a Christmas mood…!

Steepsterites, let me deviate momentarily from Project Ceylon for a moment. I have been waiting for this moment for quite a while. A new shop in the city where I live has opened. They sell tea, coffee, wine, and other various delicacies, and while I would normally be slightly put off by the coffee in particular, I have been waiting impatiently for them to get ready to open the shop, which they finally did this Wednesday. You see, the name of the shop is ‘Fru P’ which means ‘Mrs P’, and you know what? I’m Mrs P too! Clearly this is a sign. Clearly.

Today I got the chance to go in there, where I met the other Mrs P (and Miss P as well). She had a few beginner’s troubles with her till and such, but hey, they’ve only been open for two days. I’m sure they’ll come after it. She seemed very nice and helpful and she smiled when I told her that I was Mrs P too. I also got a cherry flavoured black and another one for Project Ceylon. That one was an inspired bit of a find, actually, because being currently in the process of learning that area, I automatically looked for it on her shelves, even though I thought that she would be more likely to have a Ceylon blend rather than anything single estate, or even single growing region. I thought I’d get some anyway, and then I saw a sticker with a name on the tin and asked if that was where it had come from. She wasn’t sure, but she tried to pull the big mylar bag out of the tin enough that we could see its label, and agreed with me that it probably was. So that’s another one for the Sri Lanka reference map as soon as I look it up and work out where it actually is. (I can’t remember it off the top of my head, but I wrote it down)

Anyway, the first one I’m going to try out of the three I got is this vanilla. You know, Steepsterites, about my ongoing quest for my Perfect Vanilla black tea and how I have been despairing of it even existing at all. I did have it briefly. Chi of Tea had a Vanilla Nilgiri which lived up to all my ideals of the Perfect Vanilla, but they appear to have gone out of business, so when I thought I would stock up on a significant amount of it, my plans were sadly thwarted by there not being any.

So this one. The leaf smells very sweet and it’s got a good deal of that vanilla pod-y quality to it that reminds me very much of a specific sort of licorice sweet that you can get here (and which actually have nothing at all to do with vanilla). There is a certain sharpness to it, though, which makes it feel like it has been very strongly flavoured. This had me initially sceptical, but a strong flavouring isn’t necessarily a bad thing either. It all depends on how well the base tea can keep up in the flavour.

After steeping, the cup smells like a whole sweet shop. It’s vanilla-y, of course, and with notes of caramel, coconut and marcipan. Even a little bit of nougat as well. There is also still that licorice sweet note to it, which is a good sign indeed. Nothing of the sharpness that had me a little wary with the dry leaf, but I can’t pick up much of the base either.

OOOOooooh this is gooooooood!

This tea hits all the right buttons in the flavour. Everything seems to be just so and the only thing about it that currently bothers me is that I don’t know what the base is. Which is funny because with flavoured teas I don’t normally care about what the base is.

At first when I sip, I just get vanilla. A flavour that I seem to be able to taste not only with the tongue, but with my entire mouth in a way. It seems to sort of get in there and then just expand. It’s one of the vanilla-est vanilla teas I’ve ever met where the vanilla doesn’t feel artificial or more along the lines of vanilla sugar.

It even has that vanilla pod-y feel to it. The sort of darker vanilla-y flavour that reminds me of the leathery rubbery texture of the pod.

I’m still not getting much of the base here, but I don’t feel like it’s missing either. The details of the base just aren’t that important here as long as it seems able to hold up to the flavouring without feeling either over-powered or dominating. I think it’s doing so quite well.

This reminds me so strongly of the Chi of Tea vanilla Nilgiri that seems to be forever lost to us, that I’m nearly ready to say that, yes. I have found it at last.

The perfect vanilla has to taste Just So. (Check)
The perfect vanilla has to smell Just So. (Very Nearly Check)
The perfect vanilla has to be easily available without a ton of shipping and/or helpful Steepsterites playing middle-men involved. (Check)

I don’t even have to buy it ONLINE for crying out loud!

I have to taste this through thouroughly before I can say for sure if it really and truly is my Perfect Vanilla, but it’s a very strong candidate. I just need to see how consistently I can brew it with this outcome and whether I can reconcile myself with that bit of sharpness in the aroma. The former being more important than the latter, obviously.

I knew the name of that shop was a sign!