Ok, I’m back from Chicago and back to consistant tea drinking! I can’t wait to go through all my new teas from Europe, plus I just got a swap package from Jillian while I was away, so I have even more teas!
I was looking through my collection for a black tea for the morning(ish), and while I couldn’t recall about some of them, I was pretty sure this one was. True! I was of course intrigued by this tea because of the “marzipan” flavor that is part of it. When I was at Dammann Freres they said that it was a 100g minimum on teas, but that they could maybe do 50g on some teas if I was getting a few. It was pretty vague, but I ended up getting two teas in 100g and three in 50g packages (Mariage Freres was 100g no exceptions), and this was one that I went ahead and got 100g of.
The dry leaf on this one has an aroma of floral fruitiness which is surprising, with an underlying sweet almond to it. I got one huge pink peony petal in my brew this time. The aroma of the brewed tea is more almondy and that “biscuit” note is really coming out.
The flavor is… wow, complex. While still very hot, I get a powerful, intense rush of floral at the beginning of the sip, which quickly morphed into a calmer biscuit note, and then the tail of the sip and the aftertaste is decidedly marzipan. Wow. As it cools the floral notes calm down a bit, and stretch themselves out over more of the sip, lingering on the tongue a bit along with the marzipan. Well cooled (but still warm), it’s very almondy-marzipanny, but with an overlying floral taste that compliments it very well. Definitely an A+ tea for me!
