This was from a sample swap with Ysaurella, oh many thanks for the generosity, this is lovely. It really tastes just like marrons glacés, well with maybe some vanilla.
A couple of random notes because can´t really focus too much but before I forget it:
- I thought I was being generous at scooping this up, but I should have been even more generous at dosage. Not too hot and not too long (for a black tea) seems perfectly suited to this – enough to bring all the flavours of the marrons and some body for the tea underneath and not a hint of bitterness or bad manners from the tea. And it is rather sweet on its own. It might be better with some milk, must try but when I brew it stronger.- This is to my mind an afternoon, or even an evening tea. And like its name, oh such an autumnal thing. Weird of me to impose such rules to just a tea, that there is a time of the year and a time of the day for it, but this is it.
- It really really tastes just like, intensely like, marrons glacés. Just repeating, but I kept thinking it from first to last sip.
- On the other hand, marrons glacés do not quite taste like roasted chestnuts or what I sometimes call a “chestnuty” note to some chinese black teas. Chestnuts roasting for me are one of the ultimate Autumn smells and I even divide mentally into different smells flavours – raw chesnuts (can be very good if of a variety where the the inner peel gets loose easily), the smoky charcoaly smell of chestnut sellers´s carts on the street, the little almost burnt bits on some street bought chestnuts, the different taste to home oven roasted chestnuts. Marrons glacés are lovely, but a different kind of chestnut. And not one I got any emotional ties to – but maybe that is lucky, if I had any strong feelings for marrons glacés I would have ordered somehow a tin of this before finishing my cup! It really is that amazing at being a marron glacé tea.
