Coquelicot Gourmand

Uh oh. Hi there. Morning, 7.40 am – two hours till my train to job (and lunch). It is not best thing ever. But summer-job is good and well paid, so I can not complain.

This tea – I think I wanted to rate it, but Steepster was funky again and does not let me. But it works now. I have it in sachet right now.

I think I did recommended 4-5 minutes steep, although I wanted make it weaker. Whatever.

It is, as expected from Dammann Freres, very floral in aroma. But then different notes appear. Poppy seeds (love it btw), almonds, marzipan, pastry, biscuits… sweet notes!

In tastes it changes abruptly though. Tends to fruity notes now – mostly raspberry, wild strawberry, other berries. Combined with almonds, maybe bit of marzipan. It is quite sweet for my tooth.

Overall, it is quite good, but bit too sweet.

Oh my goodness, how I love this tea! Such a delicious dessert tea; it’s beautiful to look at with its flowers and it smells so good. Brewed at 195, it’s almondy pastry or cookie mixed with poppy candy. It’s fruity/raspberry-ish, and floral, and has that almond/marzipan taste I love so much in dessert teas.

I think if I had to give a Dammann Freres tea as a gift to someone who is not that into tea, this one would be one of my top 5 if they had a sweet tooth. I can’t imagine them not loving the taste of a raspberry tartelette on an almond butter crust in a cup!

Here’s Hoping TTB

This blend smells like a candy store! But to me, the flavor is a bit muddied…I do pick out the poppy seeds and marzipan, but there’s also some floral notes and something a bit sour. Not something I’d drink again.

Mastress Alita’s sipdown challenge – March Tea #4:  A French tea

I basically went through my Dammann Freres teas to find the one that was sipdownable (and that WASN’T Noel Prague because I’m not ready to say bye to that one yet!)   This one wasn’t that great to my tastebuds (hmm.. then how is it the first DF tea that is finally gone?)  I don’t think I need to stock up on this one, rather than some other favorites.   It’s cherry/almond which seems to be present in many DF teas…  always great to try a tea and say I don’t need it in the cupboard though!
2022 sipdowns:  39

I am obsessed with all things poppyseed, so naturally I had to get my hands on some of this—to my knowledge, the only tea out there to incorporate these little specks of goodness. Unfortunately, of the many promised flavor notes, poppy is the only one I’m not getting. There’s that sweet undertone DF passes off as biscuit—while that’s not quite how I’d characterize it, it’s certainly very pleasant—and a little bit of marzipan. It’s a very sweet blend, and as much as I’ve complained about the ever-present DF Ceylon base, I have to admit it works pretty decently here. I’m enjoying my cup, but it’s not what I expected—while I was hoping for something super unique, it’s actually quite similar to some of the other DF black blends I’ve tried, like Charlotte aux Fruits minus the fruits, maybe. I’ll just have to keep hoping that someday someone comes up with an actual poppyseed-flavored tea.

I enjoyed it but I had high expectations (since it’s the first tea on Steepster for Damman Frères ;) ) I feel like this is slightly more floral than cake-y.

My brain seems to confuse DF blends like this one and Fleurilège because they’re creamy, nutty desserts in a cup. Yeah yeah, Fleurilège is hazelnut vanilla while this one is marzipan and biscuits but I’m drinking them back-to-back to decide if I like a certain one better for a future order. I haven’t even written about this yet either so it’s high time that I do.

Maybe it’s because I only have a couple cups worth of Fleurilège left in the bag, so it’s not as aromatic, but I swear Coquelicot Gourmand is more desserty, nuttier, like nougat. You’d think it would be the other way around.

I wouldn’t say that this tastes like marzipan. A cookie of some sort, definitely, but no marzipan. I got that fleeting raspberry note that Lala was talking about, before coming onto here and reading it too, so there was no influence there. I swear we’re gustatory twins.

This is tough. I like this but I’m not sure if I would get more. Luckily I have enough to experiment with this for a while before I make my final decision. It’s delicious, like practically all DF teas, but I feel like there are a couple of their other desserty teas that I would rather have or order if I were to limit myself to an x amount.

Sipdown (121)!

Thank you for the sample TeaNTees! I honestly thought I’d tried this one at some point which is why I’ve never felt compelled to ask for it in a swap or order it because in my mind it just ’hadn’t made an impression’. Then you sent it along, and I added it to my cupboard and realized that, in fact, I had not ever tried this tea! No wonder it hadn’t made an impact…

I cold brewed my sample because I smelled the dry leaf and thought that based on how sweet and almond-y it smelled it would probably made a solid dessert tea cold brew. And I was right; while I’m sure this is lovely hot I also really enjoyed the cold brew! It was very sweet and decadent with lovely, balanced notes of vanilla, almond/marzipan, poppy, and kind of a ‘pastry butter’ type note? All in all, it REALLY reminded me of Poppy Seed Danishes. And while I’m honestly not a huge fan of the danishes themselves the flavour works well as a tea!

The tea description on the DF site is flower petals, poppy, biscuit and almond paste. The packaging also says raspberry, violet, vanilla and cherry. I am getting definite raspberry, and a tiny bit of floral. Nothing that is overpowering. I have learned that I love any DF blend that mentions their “biscuit” flavor, and that’s biscuit in the sense of a European cookie – not an American biscuit. Any blend that has that flavor is going to have a bit of aftertaste that makes it like a dessert, even if it isn’t a sweet dessert tea. I have also learned that one thing DF does really well is a tea that has many different flavors versus the ones that are just one flavor and a base. Those are good too, but the ones that have a lot of things blended are just masterful. This is an example of that.

Full review and photos here:
https://tealover.net/2015/05/dammann-freres-coquelicot-gourmand/

Floral cherry sugary sweetness balanced nicely with black tea flavour. Flavour is a bit dilute. I would try this again with a greater ratio of leaf: water.

Thanks to MissB for sharing with me!