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Hi everyone! Been a little quiet lately despite having bought some new teas, mainly because I’m trying to get through my opened teas before opening the new ones. My Strawberry Rooibos,Strawberry Sencha, Afternoon at the Palace, China Oolong and Rose Petal are all looking for loving homes. Also, I changed my username from melanchocolate, hope that doesn’t confuse anyone!

This tea has been in my cupboard for so long I can’t believe I’ve only just added it to my Steepster cupboard! They serve it in the cafés on campus here actually, and it’s so good I had to order some of my own at the start of the year. It’s brilliantly mellow and smooth, as a white tea, and the elderflower and apricot give it a natural sweetness. The elderflower’s not hugely noticeable but it is definitely present and goes perfectly with the white tea. Even when scalded slightly, this is delicious.

Over the past few days I’ve really gotten into cold-steeping my tea: leaving a bottle of water with tea leaves in the fridge overnight and straining it in the morning so I can take it to work or class with me later. I tried it with this tea but in a hurry, with chilled water in the bottle and the teabag still floating in it- but it’s managed to steep deliciously in barely two hours! With no risk of scalding the tea the elderflower has a chance to really come out over the apricot and tea flavours, and the resulting iced tea is a little dry but very very sweet. This is one of my favourites :D

Giving this another try with an actual rating this time, the second cup from *cteresa*’s sample- I think I have enough for just one more after this.

Now this time round, plenty of different flavours came from the brew! Firstly, I’m surprised at how it seems to lack the usual pungency of rooibos that usually overtakes these kinds of blends; it’s normally the first thing to jump out at me in rooibos teas, but the first flavour in this one is lemongrass, definitely, followed by some of the spices. Perhaps I didn’t use enough tea in this brew because the flavours aren’t as strong as they could be upfront, but then I’m left with a clean, citrusy and spicy taste and some astringency/dryness on the tongue, but only a little. It’s the pleasant kind that makes me want to take another sip.

I guess this is the first clean-tasting, fresh rooibos I’ve tried! It’s pleasantly cooling rather than warming, even when served hot :)

Bonjour tout le monde! I’m back from Paris with a few nice teas in tow :) Didn’t manage to find any THE O DORs or Dammann stockists anywhere as the hotel wifi was so bad, I couldn’t search anything (although I saw plenty of Kusumi Teas and Nature & Décourvertes with their lovely tea tin range), so I simply went to the Carrousel du Louvre MF, the one I go to most frequently.

I bought three loose-leaf teas: would have bought more but you can’t buy less than 100g on most of their teas, and any more would have gotten too costly. So this, pear-flavoured, is just an interesting addition. I’m running out of apple tea and I love pear!

The leaves smell like pear drop sweets! Really delicious, and the brew smells exactly the same way. Brewed for five minutes as recommended, the black base is as strong as expected, but some of the sweetness is retained- in a really lovely way, too. It’s sort of in the background, but working very well with the tea flavour, too, which seems to be a little smoky and just sweet enough to take the fruit notes.

Very nice- and I can’t wait to try all the others I’ve bought!

Not at all sure what to expect from this one, but it seems appropriate for my bedtime tea before my trip to be from MF. Thanks, cteresa, for this sample!

Brewed at 90 degrees for about 4 minutes (didn’t have the patience for the full 5), it smells wonderful, full and spicy, which will be interesting as I’ve not encounterec a rooibos with only spice in it before. It’s very refreshing – and I can’t help but wonder if I should have brewed this for the full time after all! The spice is definitely there, and the floral tones are subtle, but I think I’m missing something here as not even the pungent rooibos is coming through very clearly. It seems to me like this might taste better on a hot day nearer the Nile, rather than a freezing night in England…

Sadly as I’m doing this from a tablet computer I can’t use the sliding scores, so I’ll leave that for when I next try this very promising tea :)

Finished off this sample with a friend who dearly adores chocolate teas. Thank you, cteresa, for this gorgeous sample! This time, as I was serving it in a teapot, the leaves brewed for maybe half a minute longer between the first cup and when I removed the leaves; in that second cup I could taste the bitterness that comes from overbrewing, and the chocolate was less noticeable (the caramel remained, however).

Which brings me to my next point. I’m going to Paris for a daytrip on Monday to Tuesday and I fully intend to visit Mariage Freres, and perhaps THE O DOR and Dammann Freres and others! Other than the MF beneath the Louvre (I know how to get to that one easily enough!) would anybody know of others close by to Montmartre or fairly central that are open later into the evening? I think I’ll be checking Kusumi Teas, too, as one is open in Montmartre since the last time I visited Paris :D

Every time I go to the main store to buy more tea, I end up buying another that I hadn’t intended to. This time, Keemun Best was that add-on, and what a beautiful smell it has! Previously I’ve only had the Metropolitan Tea Company Keemun Panda as an afternoon tea served in a tearoom, so I was rather surprised by the sweet, floral fragrance of the dry leaves. It’s almost sugary!

Didn’t brew this for too long as the aroma quickly went from fresh, nutty and sweet to a more standard black “afternoon” muscatel scent, and the colour is deep and clear. And, wow, I can’t tell if it’s partially the aftertaste of the sencha that was in this mug, but the keemun itself tastes almost… savoury? It’s dry and very robust, a hint of sweetness and the floral scent again in the aftertaste, and even slightly fruity. Delicious! I think I can even recognise this kind of delicate tea base from Dammann Freres blends!

Just noticed I hadn’t written a note for this one, even though I’ve tasted it so many times and even left a review on the company website… Oh well, time to catch up!

This tea smells incredible. Many people are swayed to buy it in the shop just by its perfume, this beautiful strong peach/apricot/mirabelle and marigold smell that seems like it might make a perfectly sweet, absolutely divine brew.

I’m sorry to say that, like many Whittard teas, it doesn’t copy the scent exactly (so few teas can match up to how good they smell, anyway). Kind of a shame because I am a MASSIVE fan of peach flavour and it’s rare to get juicy rich peach flavours in tea, but hey ho, this is still good! The Ceylon base is just too strong to let the peach and apricot flavours take over, but it seems to work well with them, instead. It’s not dry at all, has a kind of slight sweetness to the fruit flavour that’s more nuance-y than actually just like the fruit. The aroma of the brew is lovely… And this is just floral/fruity enough that I don’t take it with milk, but with a teaspoonful of honey.

It’s a lovely, well-balanced tea, but it’s always going to be disappointing how little it tastes like how the leaves smell. Oh well! I’ve got plenty of this to get through ♥

Many thanks to cteresa for this one! She left a careful note saying to watch out how I brew this one because it’s difficult to get right, so I took every precaution to time this one on a stopwatch. (I don’t normally time at all- maybe I should make a habit of this?)

It smells incredible… Both the unsteeped leaves and the brew have a lovely, fragrant, vanilla-y malt smell, but without being perfumey or, on the other hand, too off-puttingly malty. It’s almost like the flavoured syrups you get in coffee at this time of year, strong and sweet, practically alcoholic.

And the taste… my first thought was “I’m drinking chocolate”! It’s more like a chocolate bar in taste than any chocolate tea I’ve tried so far! And I’m actually willing to overlook the Assam a little for something with such a smooth, strong kick to it as this.

I can’t decide if I want to buy some of this for myself- the caramel’s syrupy and strong, nearly too strong, but the chocolate taste is so, so tempting. Might try this with milk.

This time I used almost a whole (level) teaspoonful for one mug and what do you know, the taste is stronger! 1/4 of a teaspoon my foot. The water I used was slightly too hot but it’s made the tea react like just a normal green tea, slightly scalded and slightly astringent/acidic, but in this case it doesn’t spoil the matcha too much. Nicely dry on the tongue and deeply vegetal and fresh.

Not a matcha I think I’ll be coming back to for personal use, but an interesting forage!