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“Oh my, this is like drinking marzipan – but in a good way! Another sample very kindly sent by Ysaurella ( we have both been placing Theodor orders, and comparing them. It will not be my last order...” Read full tasting note
“This one is a part of my Theodor order arrived on Saturday. I ordered it because I love la galette des rois ! The Epiphany cake (do you call this a Twelfth-Night pancake or cake in English ?) This...” Read full tasting note
“PERFECTION. The search for the ultimate almond tea is over for me. I’ve found it. This is it. I cannot be more grateful to Ysaurella for sending me a sample. I imagine this is what you’d get if you...” Read full tasting note
“Advent from Dustin Day 19 Mmmmmmm marzipan. Smells super strongly of marzipan, so I’m excited. The marzipan flavor is on point! There’s a bit of a cocoa flavor as well, but it’s extremely muted....” Read full tasting note
Flavoured black tea with major notes of almond paste.
As perfect Parisians, we celebrate the Epiphany around a twelfth night cake that we all share with our family. A Holy day which became secular throughout the time. I appreciate finding these particular and divine notes throughout the year. I can do so, tasting a tea that I enjoy drinking by myself… To whom does it pay Tribute? To the Heroes, to the Kings? No, to the ones, as me, who know that there is nothing better than… caring only for oneself!
Ideal brewing time: 4 to 5’ Water temperature: 90°C (194°F)Oh my, this is like drinking marzipan – but in a good way!
Another sample very kindly sent by Ysaurella ( we have both been placing Theodor orders, and comparing them. It will not be my last order though!), and this is, as expected, great. I have no associations of galette des rois or almonds with Epiphany (almonds for us are a Easter thing instead and never bitter almond), so I can not compare it. But the taste of this tea is indeed almond almond with a bit of bitter almond to give it some punch. As usual, a very smooth base underneath.
I was chancing to drink this while nibbling on a bit of chocolate covered lemon peel, and that is a highly recommended combination!
PS – actually, because mostly I have been drinking rooibos lately, bitter almond would be a perfect flavour for rooibos (with vanilla!). Does anybody do it? My beloved Carpe Diem blend is sweet almond with raspberry and strawberry, but a bitter almond could be very interesting indeed with rooibos. Maybe caramel, vanilla and bitter almond?
This one is a part of my Theodor order arrived on Saturday.
I ordered it because I love la galette des rois ! The Epiphany cake (do you call this a Twelfth-Night pancake or cake in English ?)
This is a black tea flavoured with marzipan.
The dry leaf scent is absolutely fantastic, this is an amaretto tea ! and the colours are so beautiful : red and orange small petals of flowers are mixed with a beautiful dark tea.
I was wondering if the taste would be as nice as the scent…the liquor scent is very promising and taking the first sip…release ! yes!!!!! it’s so good ! this is a liquid marzipan, with the perfect taste of a bitter almond.
The tea base is really smooth and mellow, no bitterness at all, no astringency, it’s a so sweet tea.
You know I am a sucker for almond teas…so it may be because I love so much almonds that I love it so much but I do really think this is blended perfectly with a wonderful and ideal tea base (I would like to know what it is…a Keemun maybe ?)
I am so happy to have bought 100g of this one !
In my neck of the woods (southwest Missouri) we’ve never heard of an Epiphany or Twelfth-Night cake. Traditional where you are?
This sounds fabulous – and Theodor really is good at changing tea bases to be the right one for the flavouring!
@ gmathis, yes absolutely in France, everybody loves so much these galettes des rois, look this is this kind of cakes :http://www.linternaute.com/paris/shopping/selection/galette-des-rois/1.shtml
we put a kind of ceramic bean inside and the person who gets the bean gets the crown…he/she is the king…or queen :) that’s funny, children adore this. Spain has this tradition as well, pretty sure Italy and Portugal as well.
@ cteresa : you’ll give me your opinion on this one soon, the envelope leaves tomorrow :)
Thanks Ysaurella!
gmathis we have king queen indeed, traditional for epiphany, with a dried fava bean and a little trinket – or so it used to be, not sure if the little trinket is anylonger legal. The fava was the person supposed to pay for the cake or the next one, the trinket was the king. But our king cake is not particularly about almonds – it had almonds yes but also nuts and pinenuts and a lot of candied fruit.
it may be because your galette is this one :http://becfin.fr/becfin/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/gateau-des-rois.jpeg
we have this one in the south of France but in the north, we have this one, with marzipan inside :http://www.jeveuxlarecette.fr/2011/01/galette-des-rois-a-la-frangipane-simple-et-rapide/
sort of, closer, I think, but ours is this one
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolo_Rei
though now they got variants without candied fruit and so on, including some with this spaghetti-like pumpkin jam (is better than it sounds) which I guess is a bit like a marzipan filling.
the dough is always yeast raised, sometimes denser (which i prefer), sometimes more brioche like.
Mmmm marzipan! Sounds like its my style :D
PERFECTION. The search for the ultimate almond tea is over for me. I’ve found it. This is it. I cannot be more grateful to Ysaurella for sending me a sample. I imagine this is what you’d get if you poured lots of almond extract on tea leaves and crushed some marzipan on top. I had this with almond milk for extra creaminess and it’s so blissful. The smell of the dry tea sent me into raptures. It’s very strong, almost overpowering. Almond, almond, almond. I’ve tried the Mariage almond but this Théodor is really superior.
Definitely a staple in my cupboard. What a beautiful, beautiful tea.
Advent from Dustin Day 19
Mmmmmmm marzipan. Smells super strongly of marzipan, so I’m excited. The marzipan flavor is on point! There’s a bit of a cocoa flavor as well, but it’s extremely muted. Tastes like a marzipan cake with a layer of chocolate ganache in the middle.
I have been moving recently (up north, to take a new job), and thus not in a situation where I can easily drink tea all the time. But I have a few weeks where it will be easier, so I am going to attempt to drink more of the samples that MissB sent me recently!
I have wanted to try this one for a while, ever since people rhapsodized about how it was the perfect almond tea. Almond is perhaps my favorite flavor, yet I have never really found a perfect almond tea. Most often a purely almond-flavored tea suffers from thinness in the texture, I find. MissB was kind enough to send a bit of this my way so I could finally try it.
It certainly delivers in the almond flavor. And it isn’t as thin as say, DF’s Amande Amaretti, although it is still a little thinner than I would like. I agree with someone (Ysaurella?) that this seems like a keemun-y base. Decent, but not my fave. There is some light note that I don’t care for that is definitely coming from the base, but the almond covers it fairly well.
All in all I am very glad to have tried this one. I also think that I don’t necessarily need a straight up almond tea; apparently I like my almond a bit blended (preferrably with rose and vanilla). But this is definitely the best straight almond tea I have yet tried.
Hm. A nice tea, but nothing terribly extra special about it. Not sure what the hubbub was about? Perhaps I steeped it incorrectly.
Having a cup before packing the itty bitty bit left up for Dinosara, and realizing I never drank this when it came – nor did I note who it came from! Argh. Likely OMGsrsly or Ysurella. Either way, thank you — I’m finding tons of great tea from the both of you now that I’m home!
Okay, so you remember that Thé d’amandine (Comptoir des thés et des épices) review that prompted Ysaurella, our resident fairy godmother of The O Dor tea samples to offer some up in the first place? Well, I do.
I’ve been so curious about this one – I mean, a comment such as, “Tribute by Theodor is cleary THE galette des rois tea” makes it impossible to resist, after all. And yes, this is one of those cases where – if I’d had this one first – I would have been head over heels, placing an order within the week. But now I have two very positive experiences with other almondy teas, one of them a staple in my cupboard (Pleine Lune) and the other one (Thé d’amandine) a tea I’ve vowed to re-review more generously, seeing as I was so fed up with French greens when I tried it.
This is a black tea, though, and as such more closely comparable to Pleine Lune. Quite unfairly, seeing as the MF tea is one that makes me want to put a leash on and kneel before my master. Tribute strikes me as less complex in taste, with a mouthfeel that comes off as a little watery to me, compared to the creamy smoothness of PL.
In the case of Thé d’amandine, it had the added bonus of being a green tea, and as such lighter and more accessible. It also brought some element of surprise to the table, through the addition of that distant, near-spectral cherry presence.
Tribute, however, doesn’t leave much of an impression on me.
I’m very torn here – on the one hand I feel like it’s close to sacrilege to rate this less than the seemingly obligatory 80+, but on the other, I’m really grateful for knowing exactly what I’m looking for. That knowledge, however, would be impossible if not for all this tea sampling – thank you so much, Ysaurella! I’ve had such a good time with these samples, and you really are the sweetest for helping me explore my feelings for the ravishing Monsieur Théodor.
[Sample from Ysaurella, spring 2014.]
you are absolutely right Tribute is not as complex blend as Pleine Lune can be. It is very different to me, not comparable really to my loving MF favourite blend.
Have you tried the Thé d’amandine? I forget if you’re at all keen on green teas.
Tribute is kinda of one note, well it is one note – almond and marzipan. So totally different from Pleine Lune or Je t´aime. But sometimes I am in the mood for solos.
Tribute is IMO just awesome as a digestif tea (not sure there is any such thing, well me, I use tea as digestif and some are much better for that use than others!)
never had thé d’amandine. I am open to greens but they shouldn’t have any bitterness otherwise I drop the cup…I am terrible with greens :)
We’ll see what I come up with for your samples… starts plotting
ahaha I love these kind of plots !
Hehehe.
mmm perfect mid morning tea to go along with getting tons of work done at home today. I really needed this day to just relax and focus on catching up with work. Hopefully by the time the weekend rolls around i’ll be ready for daylight savings, and being back in to the full swing of things with work :)
Grumble grumble. I forgot about daylight savings time. I hate springing forward and getting one less hour of sleep.
yep… i struggle with it too…
Really? I LOVE spring forward – the extra hour of evening daylight really makes me happy.
Don’t like the fall back – it just means the start of a long, dark, cold winter. I would be perfectly happy to stay on daylight saving time all year.
Hope you guys have an easy adjustment….
That’s a good point, Dexter. I do like more daylight in the evening. But anything that takes sleep away makes me grumble. ;-)
yeah i only hate it for the missing sleep lol
Thank you for reminding me about daylight savings! They run it at different times in the UK, so I’d be attempting to skype the folks back in Canada at entirely the wrong time this weekend :p (Oh, and I’m not looking forward to the inevitable jetlag that comes with the clock change, either…)
Spring Forward Already? Meh. Just makes me wish that the snow would disappear that much faster.
I’m glad you appreciated this one too. I’m in love with Tribune this is really an Ode to the French Galette des Rois(the “north” of France one)-so delicious !