Surabaya

This tea was very kindly sent to me in a swap with LaFleurBleue – she is almost scarily a tea twin of mine. Or at least a tea sister, so far it is amazing how our tastes coincide. She was not a huge fan of this, but in her review she mentions a magic word, lychee. I love lychee black teas (while being indifferent towards real lychee fruits), and when we decided to swap I remembered this one and requested it. And while it is interesting, I am not a fan either.

It is a very very pretty rooibos to look at – not saying it is “the” prettiest since I have seen Rouge Provence which might win that beauty pageant. It smells like it tastes – very sultry. A fruity-floral which translates to the liquour and which smells almost perfume-y to me. Description is guava with blackberry and flowers, lafleuerbleue thought it reminded her of lychees and I agree with the lychee comparison, it does indeed remind me of the smell of lychee fruits more than anything else – with a flowery note which maybe reminds me not of real roses but of rose geranium. It´s, to be frank, really really girly and sultry. I find it, despite the smoothness of the base, cloying – but will experiment with the rest of the sample in case I grow fonder or change my opinion.

Lafleuerblue thank you very much for the sample, I would have bought it sooner or later just to try it, am lucky to be able to test it this way!

This is a great tea – I like rooibos to begin with for its honey notes, but Mariage Freres has taken this base and masterfully deepened it to include vanilla and musk. Everyone I’ve served it to has commented on the flavor; it is warming and full-bodied with a long after-taste. It won’t give you a caffeine buzz but it will light up your taste buds!

I like rooibos, flavoring that mix flowers with fruits and had purchased this tea on the pure basis of the description without smelling it in the shop.
When opening the bag, I was startled by how nice this blend was looking with the blua mallow petals being softly curled and not crushed into small pieces. I believe this is probably the nicest looking rooibos blend I’ve seen yet (very shallow comment but nonetheless true – I always look at it with pleasure).
I brewed already a few teapots of this and was totally puzzled by the taste, which was very different from what I expected, did not really correspond to the description, as I could not find any hints of vanilla, blackberry and could not reconcile the fruit taste with exotic fruit (I was thinking at the flavors of exotic fruit juices).
Then two nights ago, I got hit by an awakening: lychee, the sweet and sour taste that puzzled me was that of lychee. It’s supposed to taste like guava, but guava gives me a completely different gustatory experience, in the sense that the fruit has a grainy texture which almost dries the tongue. I do not reconcile that experience at all when drinking this blend.
Now that I have identified the main flavor, I’ll try to look out for the secondary ones…
My rating takes into account the fact that I really prefer sweet and tart fruits and flavors to anything a bit sour, like lychee, which I only eat in very small quantities at one time. Had I realized that this would be the dominant flavor of this rooibos, I probably would not have buy it.