Mariage Frères

This sencha sakura smells disgustingly sweet—not only is it flavored/scented by cherry blossoms, but the recipe uses quite a bit of cherry oil as well. It smells almost like Dimetapp, a children’s cold syrup. And it tastes like it, too. There is no subtlety to the flavor. The smell overpowers and delivers the same medicinal taste. I can hardly taste the Sencha, because the cherry overpowers so much.

I must admit, I do not usually like fruity/scented teas (other than jasmines), so if you do like strong scents/fruity flavors, this tea may be for you. However, I have had sencha sakuras that are scented/flavored with cherry blossoms alone, and they were much more tasty and subtle in flavor. The cherry just enhanced the sencha—rather than taking over the entire experience as it does in this tea.

So, I FINALLY have a weekend off! I had been working 18 days straight, then I had a weekend conference in Maryland… and finally this weekend came rolling around. I felt like I haven’t had a chance to relax and breathe. Now is the chance. I came home and opened my tea cupboard. :)

I received a sample of this in a swap. I’m sorry I forgot who gave this to me. Who was it? Thank you so much! This tea is absolutely delicious. I had no expectations since I didn’t know much about this tea. I only knew that it was a black tea that had a fruity and floral scent to it. I only am reading the description now. On my tongue, it is slightly sweet and tasted very much like strawberries. I LOVE STRAWBERRIES! This is so good. There is mild astringency, but with sugar it nearly went away. I would imagine this is good in milk. I bet this would taste like strawberry milk!

This was the first Darjeeling I ever had from Mariage Frères, and I still buy it regularly. It is quite tasty and a great deal for its price. Definitely not the most delicate Darjeeling Mariage offers, Darjeeling Princeton is a great everyday tea that’s quite soothing.

I’ve found that steeping to 5 minutes, as the site suggests, makes the tea a bit bitter for me—I prefer a steeping time of slightly over 3 minutes. The tea steeps to a golden brown color. The taste is lightly woodsy but rich. I like to drink it in the morning.

I received this sample from cteresa and the following was written before I looked it up on Steepster.

I smell… coconut, vanilla and some sort of fruit.

The flavour is a bit rough, which I attribute partly to the base and partly to the heavy coconut note. There really is a little too much coconut in here for me. I get vanilla in the aftertaste and around the edges, but that fruit is eluding me. I can tell it’s there, because there is a depth to the coconut and vanilla which I get the impression wouldn’t otherwise have been there, but I’ll be darned if I can find that note on it’s own in any way at all, much less find out what I think it is. My bet is on something tropical because pineapple strikes me as something that would fit in here.

And then I looked it up to see that it’s a blend of Assam, chocolate and caramel.

What?

Okay, caramel and vanilla can be confused so what I perceived as vanilla is probably the caramel. Chocolate? Hmmm, perhaps that has something to do with the coconut-y note, although I do still think it’s more coconut-y than anything else. I’m not really sure I’ve ever met a chocolate flavoured tea that I though was truly chocolate-y, which is kind of funny considering how often that note shows up naturally. No fruit, but an Assam base. I can’t find any Assam characteristics underneath the flavouring, but I think that accounts for the sort of rough, slightly astringent feeling of it. Perhaps it’s the maltyness that cheated me into thinking there was fruit involved?

Perhaps it’s because I subconsciously expected this one to be similar to the wedding blend from Harney&Sons?

Perhaps it’s because I’ve got so used to my flavoured black teas being on a Chinese base that it never occurred to me that it might be something else entirely?

Perhaps my tongue just needs to be calibrated?

It’s a pleasant tea, though. Even if it has caused rather a lot of confusion this morning.

First : Ruby Woo Scarlett, Mélissa, you are both right : Rouge d’Automne exists in 3 versions : Black, Green and Rooibos.

I do agree the name of the tea itself is confusing as for a French speaker Rouge means as well rooibos – Most of French people probably use more thé rouge than rooibos)

Initially when I added this tea to the steepster database it was for the black blend (the only one I tasted)

So my note is for the Black version : I am desesperately in love with Rouge d’Automne.
First time I tasted it was during a lunch at Mariages & Frères. A tea is included in the menu as beverage and I wanted to taste especially this one.

I sniffed it before the Lunch and wanted to buy a full bag and wanted to ensure it wouldn’t be a mistake.

It was definitively not a mistake : the Vanilla + Chestnut are just a dream : a creamy and sweet dream.

The mix is really working fine – It may be not a very subtile mix, definitevely not the finest Mariage tea but I do really love it and I do really love it very very very much.

Pleine Lune is MY tea : the one I would keep with me if I was obliged to live on a desert island for years (hoping I could boil some water on the island !)

I love everything in Pleine Lune : the loose leaf full of wonderful petals of flowers (blue & yellow), the amazing smell of almonds of the dry leaf, the quality of the black tea base and the flavours after infusing.

The main flavours are really almond and honey.

To me Pleine lune is an opulent tea.

Pleine Lune is one of the best seller of Mariage Frères, a very popular tea of the Mariage card.

Some people have it with sugar and milk, I don’t. I have it plain because it’s already a very sweet and generous tea.

I drink it every morning when I have time enough (the week end so !) because I refuse to drink it quickly without paying attention enough to it.

I can really say : Pleine Lune you’re a star …at least you’re MY star.

Opening the tin, it is a fireworks of colours : yellow and blue flowers everywhere mixed with loose-leaf. This is very beautiful.

The smell is amazing : to me the head note is apricot, more than peach but both are present. I cannot smell any fig even if Mariage says there is fig in this tea.

The steeped tea was amber and the taste is really very sweet. So sweet that it makes this tea a little bit strange because as Rijje said we can just feel a very thin bitterness behind it.

Boléro is really a very strange and adorable tea.

I tried it iced as well and it is really appropriate too.

Inoffensive day to have this dear Christmas tea as Christmas is behind us now. It doesn’t make me think too much about xmas now the date is away.

It’s a comfort to sip it right now after spending 2 hours to search where my parcel amazon can be…and to chat online with the customer service.
Hopefully I’ll get my daughter’s books on Tuesday so one week after the expected date…fantastic for school…

I love the work done on citrus and spices in this tea and I think I will never get enough of it

Another best seller of the Mariage Frères tea house.

No suspense for this one : it is one of my favourite even if I don’t drink it very often.

I know this tea since I am a child, my mother had it in a beautiful canister. Sometimes, I was just opening the tin to sniff the incredibly perfumed blend : it’s Christmas Spirit really …candied oranges, cinnamon, Vanilla, almonds and cloves and mandarin.

I can pick up all the ingredients on the dry leaf…and it makes me really sad….
Christmas is a period that always drove me very sad and there is probably the reason why I don’t have this tea very often.

But as a good masochist, I sometimes have it (it is all year long in my cupboard) and I really enjoy it.

The infusion is as perfumed as the dry blend was, no surprise.
Maybe the perfumes are more mixed than on the dry leaf, I am not distinguish them all as I can before steeping.

And here we are : Noël is never as strong as I am expecting each time, year after year. The blend reflects exactly what I am feeling for the period…

Mon cher thé Noël, tu es définitivement l’exact reflet de cet esprit de Noël et pour cela je t’aime autant que je te crains.

Visiting Mariage’s shop,I was hesitating in shop between this tea and Montagne d’or.
Not sure I made the right choice regarding my taste.
Montagne de Jade is a green tea, really grassy but incredibly perfumed on the other hand.
Dry leaves just smell fantastic and you’ll find many corn flowers mixed with tea leaves:it’s just so beautiful.
Drinking it, you’re leaving the 21th centuary and come back in 19th centuary…you’re sitting in a Victorian living room with 3 grand aunts, you have the most beautiful bone china tea cups of the town…and you can hear the loud tick ticking of the large clock behind you …so relaxing…

It sounds magic but…there is a but…

My concern…but it is really my own concern with green teas is the bitterness.
Montagne de Jade is made for green teas lovers I think. This tea is really one of the best sellers of this brand and I am sure this is for its high qualities.
Unfortunately I am not susceptible to its undeniable and numerous charms

Tea of the morning….. (SRP #18)

This tea comes from Amanda. And of course, I had it as an inaugural cuppa in my daughter’s new Kati cup. (I know, kind of weird, but I asked her if I could use it to compare to my mug…)

This is lovely. This is my favorite Vanilla tea to date. The Harney Vanilla Black is a close second to this, but it oh so much more affordable, and much easier for me to obtain. I love Vanilla Comoro, but I can still taste the remnants of the decaffienation process, even though it is the best decaf vanilla tea out there, and I do score it a little higher than I normally would because I can drink it at night. I also have to say this is one of the first Mariage Freres teas I have really liked…well this one and The Au Tibet. I have tried a few other popular ones, but they just did not appeal. I am not sure it will make the shopping list due to there being only a few places in the US that carry this tea. I see a cup of Vanilla Black from Harney in my near future just to see if this would be worth the effort to get it.

All that nonsense aside, I am so grateful to Amanda for sharing this with me. It is really good! Thank you!

Usual mug method.

Well, yes and while I have had it before it does taste better on Easter day.

Happy Easter to all.

The tea itself is very MF, very refined. A hint of bergamot, almond ( the longer you steep it the strongest the note is), something floral, something spicy. Very lovely tea to share a pot on a spring holiday.

And another sample from cteresa (thank you for being my dealer! :P)
Very nice, the lemongrass really does come true and I actually like the taste, unlike that other lemongrass tea I bought which was really really bad. Another winner for Marriage Frères. :D

Nothing more to add other than I liked it with milk this time.

2tsp in 500ml at 205 F for 3 min. Nice deep red golden colour typical for a “red” tea. Delightful scent of strawberry and burnt sugar. Dry astringency on the tongue and can still taste the strawberry scent when breathing through the mouth. Second steep at 212 F for 3.5 min and added agave syrup and a few splashes of whole milk. Can still taste the black tea and the fruit/floral scents still detected. Will try for a third steep at 212F for 4 min black with just a touch of sweetener. This is a lovely tea but other than good quality black tea, not sure it’s worth the $22/3.5 oz at Williams-Sonoma.

-Discount this tasting note. I discovered that this tea was not Earl Grey French Blue but that it is a very delicious tea and I should try it some time. The tea I was drinking was named correctly as Bel Ami.

It’s a well rounded FF Darjeeling with much of the astringency becoming apparent when brewing the tea for the recommended time of 5 minutes at 90C or 95C (on the MF website). it is on par with their other teas like Springside. Comparing this Darjeeling to other retailers i would consider it a good tea. Comparing to the premium Mariage Freres FF Darjeelings, the taste is average. I used to love this tea until I tasted the FF Margaret’s Hope, FF Namring Upper, and FF Castleton.

Tonight I had a killer sweet-tooth that would not go away!

I thought about drinking a sweet flavored tea to curb the urge to completely blow it and dig around in the cupboard for my hidden small stash of Godiva Chocolate Gems. However, I knew that if I found them I would eat them all!

What to do?

I remembered the Sour Cherry Jam in the frig that I opened for my grandson to have in his Russian Tea recently.
Aha!
A few tablespoons would be a tasty dessert at the bottom of my teacup.

The next step was picking the right tea.
Russian tea would have been the logical selection. Being the Bonnie that I am, I passed by that suggestion and soon remembered that I had some Marco Polo out intended for the morning. That tea and the jam would go well together.

I prepared the teapot: Poured the tea…
The Marco Polo Tea was fruity but floral and a little smoky. This combination was perfect with my Sour Cherry Jam melting at the bottom of the cup…swirled with my spoon, scooped up into my mouth bit by yummy bit. I drank 2 mugs of this sweet jammy tea, slurping and swirling and gnoshing the scoops of cherry bits.

Very satisfying to my sweet-tooth.

I’m so bad!

Thank you to Amanda for this lovely sample!
Three of my grandkids came by for a short visit while mom took four others to appointments and one was off on her own (18 and drives). Eight kids…2 foster, 3 adopted, 3 bio. So I made tea and popcorn. Lion and Lamb Lapsang Souchong is a favorite with one and good with popcorn. Bear Trap is a winner for the 9 year old watching cartoons, but the 16 year old composer and I drank Marco Polo and discussed the scent and flavor.

This is a splendid tea. At first, the golden liquid tasted creamy, almost vanilla but not quite and had a floral lilly quality without being any type of flower one could put one’s finger on. I asked my granddaughter what she thought…she was amazed at the flavors and complexity. We added a little sweetening and some cream. “I taste some citrus do you?” Was it orange…no. I thought about it. “How about Honeydew melon?”…“Yes…I can taste it in my nose”, she laughed. “And a little earth…I mean dry dirt.” Well I didn’t get any of that…but she was certain for herself. At any rate this is one delicious tea. Really good and worth having on hand always. I’ve got to get some Marco Polo soon!

Their mom arrived (my daughter). “I’m taking the bus and coming back tomorrow grandma.”, she said. “Me too.”, said my grandson (not happening…9 years old on a bus ah no way). So what is this tale all about? Why do I recount this tasting this way? It’s because tea drinking for me and for millions of people is community. Tea is to be shared and mainly within the family. Makes my old heart glad.

*Second steeping proves excellent. If I were blindfolded I would almost say someone switched in some oolong…is that what I am tasting? That elusive floral creamy butteriness?

Marco Polo, aka The Gateway Tea.

Before I knew Ceylon from Snapple, I tasted Marco Polo …and a life-long romance with tea was born. Scented teas don’t have the power over me that they once did, but I still get weak-kneed and watery-mouthed at the smell of Marco Polo.

A powerful tool for converting the nonbelievers.

I got a bag of this tea from a friend to take on my trip, but I couldn’t resist and well… here it goes. Really really lovely. Thanks P!

Hot for chilly spring days and cold for sweaty summer days. Anytime of the year, I can taste the flavor of my favorite agrum: the yuzu. Drink this tea, Japan is calling you!