cteresa

Thé-o-dor is a brand which has some interesting multiple takes on the same “ideas” – for example Adèle H and Mélange de Galice are both black teas with peach and are totally totally different. If you check the brand´s description of this Celebration it is:

CELEBRATION
Flavoured black tea with major notes of chocolate, vanilla and hazelnuts

as compared to their Thé du Loup

THE DU LOUP
Flavoured black tea with major notes of hazelnuts and notes of chocolate.

I had and finished and loved to pieces Thé du Loup. But it was sold out, and I was advised this instead and OK, I will try it.

This tea smells incredible – like a rich thick dark chocolate mousse drenched in Frangelico and yeah, a little bit of vanilla as well. It is very rich in little cocoa pieces, cocoa husks I think and I think there might be vanilla bean pieces in there as well – when brewing this up keep in mind to up the dose a bit, since the cooca husks will take some of the space of the tea itself.

Brewing it, following their 95 º advice with some trepidation but being unintentionally careless with time (they advise 3 minutes, it was closer to 4, and let´s not check which side of 4 minutes it was) this is an extraordinarily smooth tea. No bitterness or roughness at all, a very smooth base. It tastes less potent than what it smells, but the scent is so rich, so evocative I am not sure any tea could really live up to it. It is more about the chocolate than the hazelnut, and the hazelnut is almost liquorish, sweeter than in Thé du Loup.

I think when comparing similar teas of a similar quality, the first one tried always has an advantages, we are always comparing the second to the first, which somehow got canon status due to having been first. Maybe that is why I prefer Thé du Loup, do not know for sure. If you are likely to prefer something sweeter, then this; if you would prefer something “drier”, then Thé du Loup.

And I am amazed at how the same company does two very good flavoured teas with almost the same flavourings but which manage to have quite different personalities (and wonderfully smooth but different bases).

This is pretty much a staple for me, fruity red fruits rooibos – very very fruity, very very exhuberant, good rooibos done properly (bad rooibos is a terrible thing, good rooibos a wonderful thing). I take this for granted and hardly pay attention to it anylonger.

Except I was making this for a child and made it strong so I could add a lot of sugar and a lot of milk (half tea, half milk I think). I tried it to test temperature before handing it over and OMG it is like it is a new tea, it is wonderful like that as well. Totally surprising and unlike I usualluy have it, like a new reminder of why I love this so much. Child approved (though admittedly the child in question has unbelievably unlikely gourmet tastes and a very expensive-liking nose).

No notes yet.

This is from a sample very kindly sent by Barbara – she had said it reminded her a bit of our beloved Thé-o-dor Milky Oolong. I had misplaced the sample (I really have too many teas still to try!) but just found it so here goes.

This is rolled green oolong, bit smaller than that Milky Oolong, but not quite as tightly rolled as Ten Ren´s Sun Moon Lake. Infusing the tea, I was sure I had made a mistake in ammount or temperature, the water hardly changed color, a very clear very pale liquor – but the tea is resulting is indeed tea! Body, flavour, some sweetness, some astringency. Barbara mentioned a taste like raw chestnuts which seems spot on to me, that sort of taste quality.

I got to experiment with more steeps and as well, with a more generous ammount. This is further confirmation that after all I am a oolong person, as long as it is a really good green oolong.

This is something different indeed – I had never had Guayusa before (never even seen it for sale), and never had a Butiki tea either. Thanks to Courtney I now got the chance to try it.

This smelled absolutely heavenly when dry. Real apple with a bit of cinnamon – the orange and cloves will take on faith and indeed it is a more complex scent than “just” apple cinnamon. I have been a bit shy of brewing this, afraid to screw it up, and that it might not smell just as great as it does. I finally took the nerve to try it.

I used a bit more amount that I would have if it had been tea, and having learnt my lesson from mate, I was afraid to scald it so temperature was in the 80-90 range surely (Celsius). Never having had guayusa I can´t really compare to other blends. The apple scent is indeed transmitted to the flavour and it´s as complex as it promised to be, absolutely lovely flavoring.

I can not judge for its energizing properties just yet – I wanted to do the taste note with it on front of me, in order to not forget anything, will edit later.

But underneath the flavouring (lovely indeed), and ignoring its yet untested effects, judging this just by how pleasant a drink it is: meh about the guayusa. It tastes a little bitter at the back of the tongue and somewhat astringent, with a hint of an herbal-grassy sort of taste. The mouth-feel is well, watery, without the pleasing body of tea or rooibos. I will try different ways of brewing this a bit, but am afraid if I try to intensify the body by adding more leaf or hotter water it will also intensify the hints of bitterness. Any tips?

I have right now, two different rooibos mixes from two of my three favorite rooibos providers, both sultry mixes named in hommage to southern islands – this Baya which is supposed to evoke Île de Réunion, and Mariage Fréres´ Surabaya a hommage to Java. And suraBAYA and Baya, get it?

And they are totally different teas, while both matching the description of sultry rooibos. I made separate, previous tasting notes about Surabaya, just mentioning it because the coincidence is funny.

This Baya I had smelled but not had a chance to buy (strategic decision of picking other teas) a few months ago, and I had promised myself to get it next possible chance. It got here, and it was slightly different than remembered. The official word is that it is rooibos with vanilla, ylang ylang, nutmeg, jasmine. The more poetical descriptions of it also mention pepper and passion fruit. Pepper is not particularly noticeable at any level but indeed there is a fruity note which seemed pineapply-or-passion fruity (more likely) to me.

This was, to my tastebuds, sublime. Very intensely flavoured, maybe a rooibos for people who do not like rooibos, and an unlikely but unbelievably good mix of flavours. And perhaps more strangely, the flavours change in the mouth, there is a fruity like smell which you can feel in the front of the mouth/tongue, but as you swallow there is a vanilla-ylang sweetness at the back of the tongue and then also that touch of the nutmeg. A very interesting sensory experience, this tea seems to work at different levels. I absolutely loved it – the vanilla is strongly there and bourbon (reunion? how appropriate) vanilla, and the touch of ylang is a delicious addition to it. Jasmine is not too strong, but just a hint, melds with the fruitiness of the passion fruit (surely there is some?) and then a touch of something deeper which is quite probably the nutmeg. And a good, smooth (nearly undetectable except in that structural body) rooibos underneath.

I am not sure I love this better than Carpe Diem, another huge favorite Theodor rooibos – let´s see with acquaintance. I do love it better than Marabout which was also an impressive rooibos mix.

Ah, anecdotal, but this seemed to have a very efficient and pleasant digestive-help effect.

I just managed to order (with difficulty and problems sadly!) some new Thé-ô-dor teas from a local retailer. Cocotte, the famous tomato darjeeling was on my wishlist but out of stock. This was instead a rather random pick, but wow this is unexpectedly filling the wish for a strange surprising tea.

I would probably not have picked it if I had smelled it before buying. It smells like pepper, black pepper, with peach and some unidentifiable flowers and just a bit strange somehow. It brews slightly different, less flowery, all (to me, at this first acquaintance) just tea, peach and black pepper. It´s a complete (but excellent) taste dissonance to have the unmistakable strong black pepper with the peach, but it was coup de foudre, love at first sight (or first cup). That pepper and fruit, it somehow works (for me. I suspect this will not be everybody´s cup of tea). I think this is the cure to me being tired of nice polite flavoured teas which seem samey-samey and forgettable. No way anybody could confuse this flavoured tea with any other flavoured tea.

The base is lovely, smooth but strong Assam. I am reminded, as I was by Mandalay, that chai is not just any tea with spices. This, like Mandalay, is a tea where a spice is essential, but without being in any way a chai.

I am slightly in love with this tea, unexpectedly. So lovely.

This was a cup I had on a tea shop, on my effort to try to get darjeelings. I did not prepare it.

There is a definite rose flavour to this – many times weaker than regular run of the mill china rose congou, but there has to be some extra flavouring here. I had misunderstood and though it was unflavoured, that the rose was metaphorical, so not quite what I was expecting. I did not much like it, but then again me and darjeelings are not too friendly.

I suspect preparation was not quite perfect, infusion time was up to me, and I think I overbrew it slightly. But a tea to not buy, and will keep trying good quality (UNFLAVOURED!) darjeelings whenever I get the chance.

A sample kindly given to me by Angrboda, thank you so much! This was sort of a random pick, whatever was closest – I needed to cleanse my palate after a really bad tea (“japanese” green with quince, from the cutesy gift shop. I am a sucker for quince and was looking for a quince flavoured tea but I should have known better! At least it was cheap but OMG it tasted so so so cheap) .

I had never had white tea with jasmine before (though I had had it with a touch of osmanthus) and this is lovely. Very good quality tea, and there is an underlying woodsy-ness beneath the flowers which gives it depth, which I quite like. But there is a but, while I like jasmine teas very much I think I prefer my white teas plain or more lightly flavoured. I like jasmine with green tea – not sure if there is a real judgment there or it´s just due to familiarity.

Spring, after taking its own sweet long time to arrive, decided to pretend to leave after all. It´s cold and windy, very disappointing. But it´s making me turn to my tea corner and drink and sampling those samples I was saving, as a treat and a way to cheer up.

Mandalay was another sample so kindly sent by Ysaurella. I had been so intrigued by her references to it. And this is just not what I was expecting. I was expecting a chai, and while this is spicy, it´s a totally different type of tea.

I had today just tried a perfume (mother´s day is coming. everybody wants you to try perfume, you can not walk on the street past perfume shops without being offered a sniff). It was a woody spicy ladies´ perfume, with a cedar base and flowers, patchouli maybe. And in my mind this tea is irresistibly linked to that perfume – a sort of “dry” floral with woody overtones. In the perfume it was cedar, here it is the spices, cinnamon (which I guess is woody as well) and others (cloves? cardamom?) and then a bit of rose indeed, but the mix of roses and cinnamon tastes melded somehow into something woody rather than separate. A very interesting taste.

I do not have a lot of experience with Pu´er – and the plain ones I have had were sort of awful to my palate. The flavoured ones I have found easier to drink, but keep in mind, I have very little experience with pu´er teas.

This was kindly sent in a swap with Ysaurella and she had not tried it yet when she sent it to me, so no brewing tips. The Cannon website seems totally useless for anything (and flash should die….) so I have been experimenting with this. My problem with it is trying to make it strong, or better said intense enough.

My first experiment with water round 80-85 and my usual ammount of black tea resulted in a mellow earthy sort of cup, but a definitely too weak one – very intense color and a sort of thick texture to the liquor (there has to be a word for it, but totally escapes me), and a nice mellow yeasty almost type of flavour, with some vague vanilla and peach-mango hints, but very watery somehow. I amped up the temperature to 95 degrees, and steeping time to 4 or 5 degrees and used 50% more leaf than I would think to use and it was much better. A nice cup of tea. But still not particularly fruity. And my brain finds the different tea-ness of pu-er baffling.

I am not going to rate this yet, because I am not quite sure what i think of it. My second time having it and not only my feelings changed from the first experiment, but my feelings are changing as I drink the cup.

First, the scent – this has an extraordinary scent, a rich, sultry vanilla scent, totally different from cloying one-note artificial vanilla scents and a scent which reminds you that why yes, vanilla is a flower, an orchid (ok, yellow orchid which then creates a black pod, and yes, it´s the seed pod, but still vanilla is floral). Sultry vanilla caramel, that is it. This went on my wishlist the moment I smelled it. Right now I was in the mood for a vanilla tea, and I went on a walk which accidentally took me past the tea shop and well, it came home…

Expectations are funny things which get in the way of appreciating what we get instead. This tea is not truthful to the scent. It´s much more sedate, much less exuberant, maybe classier than its scent. No caramel after all. So I was underwhelmed at first, since it was so very different from what I expected from its scent. But if what I was expecting this as a lightly naturally flavored vanilla tea then well this is indeed lovely. It´s got an incredibly smooth base (thank you Mariage Frères, for not using the same base for *everything) which I think has some, but not a lot, of Assam on it. And a lovely aftertaste. I am getting to like this more each time I have it, I will make another taste note after I have it a few more times.

Angrboda, not sure this will be your vanilla tea indeed, but if you ever want to try it, let me know!

Now it´s getting hot I have been trying different ways to brew this up. This taste note is a DO NOT DO AS I JUST DID warning.

I liked this brewed hot. I wanted to try a cold brew, which I just did – 4 grams of tea (which is a lot of volume, I weighted it and surprised myself at how much it was), half a liter of cold water left in the fridge overnight and then strained. And it turns out: bitter. Either it was much too long or too much tea.

I get some citrus yes, but I get an acrid bitterness mostly which is not pleasant. I did not use sweetener and not sure it would have improved it anyway, it´s not tartness which often can be rescued and improved by sugar, it was a different type of bitterness.

Weirdly enough, the older the tea (strained) got the more bitter it seemed to me. Despite that, I did drink almost all of it – I wanted to test if it was really that bitter and try to figure out where I went wrong. And as an energizer it did its usual work! A different type of wake me up than coffee or tea, a smoother one IMO.

Happy story with this tea, it´s now ubiquituous and easy to find (Continente, 3.95€ and the tins are reusable). Cheap thrill yay. I am now on my third tin. But a warning this tea is ONLY ANY GOOD ICED!

Hot, it´s too much hibiscus with too strong a fruit flavour. But if I make it very strong, add lots of sweetener or sugar and cool it, I love it.

My recipe right now, is with digital scales add 12 to 15 grams of the tea to a teapot. Add 1 liter of boiling water and let it stand a couple hours or overnight. I usually add a lot of sweetener and sugar to this, maybe 8 teaspoons or even more – I usually never have sweetener or sugar with hot tea but this really is much better with sweet to balance the tartness. Chill it very well and it´s awesome. Even if it does have hibiscus.

Having another test of this. I am now expecting the hibiscus on it, but even so, it still overpowers me. There is the tartness, the acidity, and it seems to spread all over other flavours without being balanced by anything else. Maybe there is a peach and berry underneath it all, maybe there is rooibos (rhetorical, there is rooibos evidently on the mix) but the hibiscus just takes over.I am not a good person to rate this, hibiscus really is not my thing.

LaFleurBleue kindly sent me some of this in a swap and she sent some great detailed instructions. Which I misplaced (so sorry, lafleurbleue, I appreciate very much the effort just the same) and then kept postponing trying this in case I got this wrong – it´s my first formosa high mountain oolong, did not want to screw it up. And having found finally the entry for this tea after making it, I did indeed screw up the process but it does not matter because it forgave me and keeps forgiving me.

I used maybe water at 70 -75 for 2 or 3 minutes for the first brew, and then a bit hotter water also for about 2 minutes for the next ones. Which is not as I should have done and will try the brewing instructions next time now I found them. The first brew I got some astringency, but not an unpleasant astringency at all. The next brews are fantastic IMO, a very clear liquor, a very light pure kind of taste but magically invigorating and a herbal type of taste which is just lovely. I am going to keep steeping these leaves – which btw is sort of magic, such tiny tiny little compact balls of green slowly unfurling (only at 3rd steep are they really open) to huge leaves and branches. Magical. If you get the chance brew this in a clear container to enjoy the unfurling.

oh, wow, this is maybe the fruitiest green tea I ever had. It smells amazing though I worried it might be “too much”, like those scented pens or stationery when I was a kid. Brewed up it smells slightly different and at first sip it´s not cloying, but a very strong taste of peaches and melon.

I had to go check on the Theodor website what were the notes of this – the peach and melon are obvious and far stronger than everything else, though I think in retrospect there is a hint of the passion fruit. The website specifies it is vine peach which vindicates my nose, I did think it was vine peach. The melon is the dominant note here, though interestingly it seems to spread, move to the forefront as it cools – when I poured the hot water the peach was more obvious and also more present at first sip, then it started to get more in the background with each cooler sip. It´s still there on the last lukewarm sips but just as a background.

This is just lovely. I think this would make an excellent (though probably quite expensive) ice tea. And it´s very summery as well, a great tea to have, hot or cold, on a warm day (is spring finally here? cross fingers!). While Mélange de Galice, another peach Theodor tea, was a sort of summer dreaming tea to have in the darkest of winter, Pêché Mignon is a summery tea to have when summer is coming – or maybe that is just me being fancy.

This is going on the to-buy list for sure, though in practical terms, it might not happen anytime soon.

PS – second steep, using a little hotter water, a bit less water and a slightly longer steep also good. But less intense melon and more noticeable peach. Not sure peach is stronger actually, I think it is just that by the melon being more toned down you notice the vine peach more.

Soooo, lotus.

I have never (or not yet) had plain lotus tea. I have seen it for sale, plain lotus on chinese grocery stores, but never quite dared (most of tea in the local chinese grocery stores seems to be intentionally medicinal and/or for slimming and taste even worse than you would expect. Very dangerous places to buy tea if you are not totally sure what you are doing).

I think I am learning what lotus brings as a flavoring by comparing mentally teas that I have had which have had lotus as a flavoring (this, elixir d´amour), though not sure that is leading to the right image. Sultry and floral maybe.

Barbara and I have been swapping teas and since we are both fans of Theodor teas, we have been sharing a lot of our Theodor purchases. This is an interesting blend she sent me, one which I have been half eyeing towards purchase. Green tea with fig, and named saigon, ah, tempting (though admittedly just about everything from Theodor sounds tempting). Barbara has warned me about being careful when brewing this. I got to test with the rest of the sample, but I think I followed close enough. The result was lovely but I think I am probably not a lotus person (if I can figure out what lotus is). The fig was maybe in the background a dried fig like flavour and it was mostly a sultry floral-type. I could not detect the lemon. The tea base was lovely and not bitter.

Not rating this right now, since I want to try brewing this a couple more times to figure out if I am really brewing this right. And what lotus is supposedly to smell like!

Having this again and this is just not for me. It sounded so very much like my thing I would have ordered it sooner or later. But it´s just too much, too strong, too floral. Like a lychee-geranium smell and sadly it´s just not my cup of tea.

So finally found a Mariage Freres rooibos I did not love, took me a while!

The weather has been so bad that somehow I am finding myself buying new teas in April! Picking new teas often is an autumn thing for me. But I was craving vanilla tea which somehow I just did not have at home, and found myself returning home with 50 grams each of vanilla tea and nothing less than 2 emperors. The vanilla tea, I will get to it because first brew has not been what i wanted, but this Tzar Alexandre, oh my, am sort of in love. Though a warning, this is a very personal love.

I love lapsang souchong but usually prefer the bergamot in earl greys to not be too strong. This is a light lapsang souchong with light bergamot and somehow tea body. It´s awesome, like how did nobody think of this before, where has this concept been all my life? BUT a warning, not sure if this is a tea for those who do not love lapsang.

The brewing details are not a recommendation, just a note. I brewed it slightly too hot and/or slightly too long, will experiment a bit with it. It survived wrong brewing details with honors, but I think it will be better with water some 5 or 10 degrees cooler.

I have certainly been having trouble making a taste note of this tea. There are no less than 3 entries for it on steepster, and I could not seem to add any taste notes to the original entry for it. (and accents on tea titles seem to just not work with steepster search). testing now….

And it worked, wow! to add the taste note now

This was a sample for a swap with Toitoi, thank you so much! This was a tea which had been on my wishlist for a while and which I was so glad to have a chance of trying. Ysaurella was the one which pointed out that it had hazelnut flavours, after I had already had a couple cups of it without identifying those, and she is totally right. Not sure where my nose was what, except that I think the brewed liquor smells quite different than the loose leaf. The dry leaf, particularly concentrated on the awesome foil bag Toitoi used smells intensely of sweet hazelnuts, with caramel and vanilla (that is: sublime). The liquor itself, at least how I brewed it, the hazelnuts meld and it´s the caramel vanilla which rules. And it is a lovely tea indeed.

But, I had my other Mariage Freres tea around and remembered to compare this tea´s scent with Wedding Impérial and Pleine Lune. Comparing just the scent of the dry leaf, Phénix wins it: smells much more balanced (Pleine Lune has that sharpness of the bitter almonds, Wedding Impérial that malty ovomaltine like smell) more delicious, just more right. But and this is a big but, the liquor seems to have less character, be less memorable than for those other more famous MF tea (and I also prefer Thé du Loup to Phénix). Not sure if this means the others are more justly famous, or if it´s me being biased towards the teas I have had more often and am more familiar with. Interesting.

This tea would, by the way, be a buy-more if I ever get the chance without being lured away from it from all the other so-alluring hard to find Mariage teas…

This is a tea which grew on me – at first try it was not what I was expecting (too mellow, too natural. Too classy… And yes, those are not bad things, just not what i was expecting somehow!) but each time I loved it best. So rebuying a new package of this how could I not love this at first sip? It´s even better than I remembered. Very smooth and mellow, a really classy flavoured tea.

Some brewing tips, this resteeps very well as long as you are using a bit more tea than usual (maybe 25% more) and do not use the first steep´s water too hot. If so, it´s definitely worth it to keep using the leaves till the tea stops being great – you can probably get a couple more good steeps out of it.

Seeing the other reviews, I think I was probably very lucky with brewing process or there was some magic in my water´s reaction to it. This is a bag very kindly sent as a surprise in a swap with Toitoi and it is (I think) the nicest bagged black tea with strawberry I ever had (must try ahmad´s though). It tastes very strongly and somewhat accurately of strawberries (or at least of strawberry flavoured stuff), the tea underneath is not particularly distinguished nor strong (at my brewing details) but wow, the strawberry really is nice. I like it very much and it is a bagged tea I would buy if I ever see it for sale, it´s a convenient portable cheering little tea.

If this does not have hibiscus hidden somewhere on it, I will eat my hat. My non-existant hat, but there you have it. A tiny tiny little itty amount of hibiscus but that it does have it, oh I strongly suspect so.

Dry leaf or while steeping this smells divine. Peaches with berries on a rooibos base. LaFleurBleue who sent me this sample would know what I mean when I say this is a fruity rooibos like Berry Berry Nice instead of a blend fruit rooibos like Carpe Diem or Marco Polo Rouge.

But then you taste it and instead of mellow rooibos, the underlying taste is a sharp sour acid hibiscus like tang.I can not get either the peach or berries promised in the scent or the mellowness of the rooibos which should be underneath. Nope, there is something hibiscus and just does not work with my expectations. I will keep trying though.

I got this massive urge to go and separate the rest of the sample and just barely refraining from doing DNA analysis on anything which might be hibiscus to see if it really is. But really, I would swear I can taste the hibiscus right on the middle of my tongue. I have a test where I leave a little bit in a cup overnight and then seeing the color and shape of the residue, will check.

Thank you very much for the sample, LeFleurBleue, this smelled heavenly indeed and I think I am learning somethings about TWG blends!

PS – the overnight cup test hints strongly of hibiscus as well, the residue is blue-ish pink rather than orange-brown as it with most rooibos. Examining the dry leaf, there seems to be rooibos, little tiny pink berries (a filler? they look somewhat like pink peppers used in spice teas and which taste like nothing), rose petals and tiny little pink bits of petals which could be hibiscus. Hmm, enough evidence?