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A few days ago, I celebrated making it to another birthday! My wonderful and very thoughtful wife gave me a Breville OneTouch Tea Maker for my birthday three years ago. That amazing machine has really contributed to the joy and fun of my tea tasting experiences. If you are looking for an extremely convenient method to make a consistently fantastic cup of tea every time, I highly recommend the OneTouch Tea Maker. But I digress…Where was I?…Oh yeah…Now I remember. (Please bear with me. You will recall that I am another year older.) For this year’s birthday, my beautiful wife also remembered my tea “habit” by giving me a trademark black container of Harney & Sons Paris tea.

When I lifted the lid of the metal container, there was a strong fruity aroma underneath. I’ve tried a few other French teas by Mariage and those teas seemed to have the identical unbrewed odor.

I steeped the short black leaves for five minutes at 212 degrees as directed on the container. The finished color was a very dark gold, almost brown. The aroma was more vanilla than fruity.

My first taste produced a medium-strength black tea flavor. After that, vanilla followed by fruit seeped into my taste buds for the remainder of my cup.

It’s interesting that the flavor of this tea is also very similar to the Mariage teas. That’s not a bad thing because I do enjoy those teas. Maybe the signature flavor is mandatory to call the blend “French.” I would say the one characteristic that sets this one apart is the dominance of the vanilla flavor over the fruit.

This is a nice smooth tea with no bitterness and a lighter than expected after taste. The flavor theme is a composite of fruity vanilla. The tase is neither overpowering nor overly sweet (if there is such a thing!). This selection was another one of those teas where the more I drank it, the more I liked it!