L'Oriental

Smelled way better than it tasted. Unoffensive green tea with light generic fruity flavor that gets a little sweeter as it cools. I added a bit of sugar after the first few sips. I liked it, if I had a large amount of it it could be an every day afternoon tea but I wouldn’t seek it out just now.

Day 1 of Advent Calendar.

This is one of the teas in the calendar I had not tried before.

On first sniff of the tea sachet it smelled strongly of green tea, maybe a bit bitter with strong artificial strawberry scent.

The brewed tea initially tasted quite bland and thin and my first thought was that I needed to add some sweetener. After the tea sat for a bit in my travel mug it thickened up quite a bit. The green tea base is quite creamy and buttery. Slightly vegetal and astringent in the aftertaste. No need to add sweetener becuase the tea also has transformed into hints of sweet strawberry, albeit artificial strawberry. On every few sips I feel like I get a kick, like the kind you get from tart pineapple. I don’t seem to taste any other fruits but the overall taste is vaguely tropical. I think the cornflowers are what is giving the tea the thick feeling. I anticipated it to have a bit of pastry flavour but I am not getting any of that today.

A decent start to the next 24 days.

Dammann Frères Advent Calendar – December 1st

Wee, so excited to finally start this thing! I’ve been giving it longing looks since it got here (clearly I should’ve put it somewhere where I couldn’t see it).

This is a sencha tea with passion fruit, peach, strawberry, and pineapple. There are some colorful flower petals mixed in, making it quite attractive. Dry scent is definitely fruity and sweet, and it’s heaviest on the peach. I did a shorter steep since I find most flavored green teas get bitter rather quickly, hopefully that wasn’t a mistake.

Whoa, this sencha is really grassy and… leaf-y tasting. Maybe a touch like eating raw spinach? Or wheatgrass. I was not expecting it to have so much oomph. The fruit, on the other hand, is far more subtle than I expected! I can taste the peach slightly, and more so in the aftertaste, but not much else. Overall, it’s not bad, but not what I expected. The focus is definitely mostly on the base tea here, and it’s perhaps the grassiest base I’ve ever tasted.

Dammann Advent Calendar, Day 1

It was funny finding this as the first tea in the calendar, since I had requested (and received) a sample of it with my previous order.

I feel pretty much the same way about this tea that I did the first time I had it, which is to say, it’s ok. I don’t love it, I don’t hate it. It’s a fruity green tea on a pretty grassy sencha base. I don’t really care too much for Dammann’s sencha base, and I don’t have a lot of green teas by them. I mean, I don’t really care for nearly any flavored green tea these days. But I do still like them cold brewed, so I will have to remember to cold brew my last sachet of this (from the order). I will say that I left some of this in my cup and it got quite cold, and it was a nice tasty fruity green, and the fruit was even fruitier.