Les Nymphéas

I found this by surprise at Musee de l’Orangerie in Paris. Which BTW, everyone should go and see. It is a really small museum of impressionist and post-impressionist modern art. It is quite expensive to get in, compared to the not too much you get to look at, 9 euros. But, it houses Monet’s Waterlillies (AKA Nympheas). They are absolutely amazing to just sit and gaze at. Even if you are not an impressionist fan, I am not, but these are just a beautiful art peices.

Anyway, there is a little café/gift shop and they sell this tea! I totally stumbled on it by accident. I can’t find any history on this tea on any of the Nina’s Paris websites, US or EU, but it appears that this tea would have been created specifically for these paintings. As any one that has followed me for a while, you all know I am a big lover of Nina’s Paris. I was kind of disappointed I did not know about it before, this is something I totally would have picked up from Nina’s. It feels like it is this secret tea that only a select few know about. Kind of like Fete de Versailles (which is super delish).

Anyway, enough gushing and moving on to the tea. The ingredients list Sri Lankan black tea, apricot flavours and cornflowers.

The tea smells strongly of black tea with apricot perfume/scent. The tea brews up dark red-brown. It has the same apricot perfume/scent. The tea tastes like a moderate to strong bold black tea. There is a flavour of apricot. It is initially quite natural tasting but then if does fade into a bit of artificial flavour. It is also quite strong. The corn flowers make the tea taste quite thick but they are also quite strong in flavour. But I am wondering if that is just due to what got scooped up to brew.

I rarely do a second steep but I was too lazy to do a “new” steep, so I re-steeped this one. The second steep is actually better the first. The flavours just all blend together better.

I quite like apricot teas and have been on a quest to find the best black tea with apricot. Many of them come off just so artificial, or bitter, or the flavour doesn’t blend well with the tea. I think this blend does a good job.

This is a good blend. Not my absolute Nina’s favourite but I am still quite happy to have found it and to have tried it. Totally makes me feel like I am a member of the secret tea blend society :P

This is a surprise blend my mother offered me. It’s sold in a beautiful box : cylindrical, navy blue lacquered box decorated with a label that shows the famous painting by Monet Waterlilies … well one of the paintings … since Monet painted a series of more than 250 … The tea had been purchased in the Orangerie museum in Paris . By the way I recommend to all visitors of the Jardin des Tuileries to make a stop to admire the spectacular big sized paintings of the garden museum .

Tea: Well it is very good ! There are still a few months I would have praised its many qualities: lovely dry leaf nicely decorated with blue and pink flowers , an extremely mellow tea base ( in some ways it reminds me the tea base used for Boléro of Mariage Frères ) , its delicious taste of apricot and at the same time a light floral taste provided by cornflowers and roses petals.

Today I have to say this tea is a real success, extremely smooth and quite delicious .

The thing is I drink now less flavoured teas and am more inclined to pick directly a straight tea at any time of the day , so I’m less enthusiastic about them than I was before.
But on the other hand I’m still very happy to drink a good flavoured tea and this one is one of them. I love it.

Some pics of my session with this tea : http://thevangeliste.wordpress.com/2014/09/20/the-les-nympheas-ninas/