Noël

Another best seller of the Mariage Frères tea house.

No suspense for this one : it is one of my favourite even if I don’t drink it very often.

I know this tea since I am a child, my mother had it in a beautiful canister. Sometimes, I was just opening the tin to sniff the incredibly perfumed blend : it’s Christmas Spirit really …candied oranges, cinnamon, Vanilla, almonds and cloves and mandarin.

I can pick up all the ingredients on the dry leaf…and it makes me really sad….
Christmas is a period that always drove me very sad and there is probably the reason why I don’t have this tea very often.

But as a good masochist, I sometimes have it (it is all year long in my cupboard) and I really enjoy it.

The infusion is as perfumed as the dry blend was, no surprise.
Maybe the perfumes are more mixed than on the dry leaf, I am not distinguish them all as I can before steeping.

And here we are : Noël is never as strong as I am expecting each time, year after year. The blend reflects exactly what I am feeling for the period…

Mon cher thé Noël, tu es définitivement l’exact reflet de cet esprit de Noël et pour cela je t’aime autant que je te crains.

Sample Sipdown!

This is the final sample from my trade with Ysaurella, which was a wonderful trade for myself, but not so good for her, as the package I sent got stuck in customs…or drank by somebody there?

Tomorrow will mark a week that I sent a 2nd package. Everybody think successful thoughts, please? It seems like everybody else’s packages have made it through. Hopefully mine will as well!

This is a flavorful tea with just the right amounts of almond, vanilla, orange, cinnamon, & cloves. It does have a very celebratory holiday taste. Thank you so much, Ysaurella, for all of the lovely teas that you sent to me! :D

This is perfection. I drink this all year round, even in the dog days of summer but it’s got this magical blend of clementine, spices and almond that absolutely embody the holiday season. I adore this. It’s fresh and crisp and the perfect cup to make you wish it were a little colder outside. Gorgeous stuff and one of my favourites teas.

This is a tea for the holidays! It is heavy in flavor and screams for a dash of milk. I taste orange, cinnamon and perhaps clove… who knows! It possesses many if not all the spices I use as a base in my oatmeal cookies. But it has the familiarity of a cinnamon and spice air spray by Glade and this to some might be quite the turn on. Who knows?

At any rate, after a return from sea and seeking comfort in a cup of tea at home… I should have stuck to the tried and true. However being me, I tried a new path… or tea. I shall try this again when the grumbles of recent travels have calmed and I am sure to provide some insightful remarks.

I can safely say that despite its wild taste of holiday festivus, it is a pleasant tea not bitter or grumpy. Very unlike its taster… I am sure it will forgive me. :)
Until my second cup then…

I received this in a swap as well. The sample wasn’t very large so I oversteeped what I did have. It’s a little perfumy to the nose…maybe more like Cologne. It’s not as dark in color as I thought it would be but then again that may have been due to the amount that was steeped. It’s a pleasant cup but no individual tastes come thru too much to be individually identified. I can taste a very little bit of a vanilla-bourbon type aftertaste if you really think about it. Regardless..it’s ok…I would like to try more from this company if I could ever find it.

EDITED NOTE***
I tend to use a larger Tea Cup so…I think this had a lot to do with it. Had I used a regular size cup I am sure it would have been stronger and darker. I really did like it and hope to find more of this brand locally.

I picked a little tin of this up in a tea store in Nice this summer and forgot I even had it until yesterday. The dry leaves smell of cinnamon, clove, almond and similar to Pleine Lune except more cinnamon I think. The wet leaves lack the same strongly spicy aroma but the nice tea base is more evident. I don’t smell much vanilla (maybe due to my tea’s age?) even after the tea is brewed but I do pick up some of the orange scent.

Tasting the tea itself the first notes are cinnamon and clove with orange following and almond lingering. It is a happy little cup of Christmastime.

Just had a good pot of this one. I like it because unlike many other Christmas-themed teas, it is not overwhelmed by cinnamon, or orange peel, or some unidentifiable “spice” flavor. It is balanced between the citrus and spice elements and based on good quality black tea. This is another one that does quite well with milk and sugar, and though I haven’t tried it that way, I imagine it would be fine iced as well.

I purchased a box of tea bags as a treat on Cyber Monday. Before I got it, I wasn’t sure if I will like it from the flavors descriptions: orange, vanilla, orange zest, and Christmas spices. I don’t mind hints of clove, but don’t like it when it gets overpowering. I remained skeptical up to the moment I pulled pulled the cellophane from the box and gave it a whiff.

First impressions include warm aromas, doesn’t come across as too spicy. The first steep delivered milder flavors than I expected. The orange comes through, along with the spices. The vanilla doesn’t stand out, but it’s there in the background, marrying the orange and spice. I found the flavors to better developed in the second steeping.

Overall, I think I enjoy this tea. Sipping it while working, the warm aromas becomes a pleasant distraction. One thing I found though was the slight tannic feel in the mouth (almost unnoticeable), but only because I leave my teabag in the cup all the way.

I was seriously confused as my tea canister reads ESPRIT DE NOËL but I guess it also goes by it’s nickname, NOËL. Either way this is a great holiday spiced tea. Think Constant Comment only much more sophisticated. I can’t wait to have it again this holiday season.

Evocative, but heavy on the cinnamon/cloves. It does smell like Christmas to me, but I’ve been known to sneak a cup or two in summer. It’s also nice as iced tea but can get too astringent quickly.

A holiday treat – best used sparingly. The cinnamon can overpower. Great for setting a holiday mood, and the fragrance is heavenly.

I very much wanted to like this tea. It was a special order based on a Teamailer’s recommendation, however, it seems that our tastes diverge on this blend. The smell is overpowering: the fragrance dominated my tea cabinet so badly that I had to seal it in extra Ziploc bags. The flavor is equally intense. I found it too perfume-like for my palate.