Anna Send Message

This one confuses me – I like my flavoured rooibos well enough, but this is like drinking straight-up rooibos. It smells like rooibos in the bag, it smells like rooibos in the cup, and it tastes like rooibos in the cup. Any hint of anything else, mango or otherwise, is simply absent. I can’t really add anything else – it’s just rooibos.

Again, this might be a case of me not picking up Butiki’s more subtle flavourings, or just that I’ve taken my sweet time trying this tea. I keep everything in air-tight containers, but you never know – mangoes can be so devious.

(Insert link to working ‘Self-defense against fruit’ Monty Python clip here.)

[From my Butiki order to Santa Clara, October 2013.]

This smells so very richly citrusy in the bag, it reminds me of the Malaco Fox lemon toffee candy I used to love as a kid.

It’s a little too much, though, and it comes off as too artificial to me. Citrus is hard to get right, and the scents often land too close to household cleaning products (I never buy lemon, it’s one of the worst things ever) or over-the-top flavoured candy (the rules for candy are different, though).

In the cup, it is – just as I have come to expect from DF – much more subtle and bland, but the artificial note remains. I guess, as in the case of the ginger and the violet, some of DF’s flavourings just aren’t for me.

[From my epic Instant-Thé order to Rome, October 2013.]

I was so sure I’d reviewed this that I’d put it in the cupboard. The shame. It might have been because it’s not a favourite – this is one that leaves me fairly indifferent.

In the bag, the dry leaf smells very boozy, but not a ripe, fruitrotty, autumnal booziness like Marco Polo (vert) from Mariage Frères, but a much flatter, staler scent, like forgotten home-made lemonade going to waste. Yeasty, almost.

The yeastiness carries through into the cup, and unfortunately there’s very little fruit to balance it. Peaches? Grapefruit? No, not really. They decided they’d have more fun somewhere else. What there is, is a lightly perfumed sweetness – it could be either fruity or floral.

This tastes like something I had – I don’t remember if I ate it or drank it – in Japan, which gives it an unfair advantage of familiarity; it’s hard to rate fairly. But, then again, this is a rooibos/green blend. I usually say I’d rather drink a Lupicia tea than most any other because I like their bases so much, but this blend doesn’t really appeal to me as much as their straight greens.

[From my Lupicia spree at Westfield Valley Fair in Santa Clara, October 2013.]

There’s a whole, perfect little rose bud in my steeping basket, and that makes me happy.

Just like this tea.

This is a nice idea – currant, violet, macaron. Ideally, this would have a nice balance of berry notes from the currants, elegant florals from the violet and a sweet. light, pastry presence keeping the whole thing together.

Nose wise, I mostly get violet, but also an almondy note, which, generously, could be deemed the pastry.

In the cup, it’s mostly currant, with a slight minty hint to it; I suspect this is the Dammann Frères violet. We don’t really get along, I think; I definitely prefer Comptoir’s violet flavour.

The macaron, to use a now clearly established Steepsterism, RSVP:d to the party, but did not show up.

Is it a tasty tea? Yes. Is it a tea for me? No.

[From my epic Instant-Thé order to Rome, October 2013.]

Oh.

The bag is really, genuinely, irrevocably empty now. I shook it and held it upside down and everything.

And I can’t get any more right now.

Flurr.

[Sample from the EU Travelling Box, autumn 2013.]
[Sample polished off in Rome, January 2014.]

I had a tiny craving for this the other day, and one more just now. I was going to send the rest of it to a friend, but maybe just one more cup before it goes.

Honestly, I have no idea why I enjoy this so much. A pretty basic berry-flavoured black?

It’s an evil tea, though. It makes me wish I had a cookie.

I’m slowly going through the last of my untried DF teas, and I honestly feel like I’m writing the same review over and over. When I dipped into my Mariage Frères haul, I felt nothing of the kind. Not the slightest hint of it. Their greens all had completely different personalities, and put me in different mnemonic mindsets from the first sip.

DF’s teas, on the other hand, do nothing to my brain. It’s like being on a date with someone who’s pretty and well-dressed and highly sniffable, but they do nothing to my brain so I’m simply too full for dessert and may we have the check, please?

In the bag, this is an exuberant berry explosion – definitely not artificial, Dammann Frères don’t do artificial at all; they somehow manage to get even the most insane berryfest come off as natural.

Steeped, also very berryful. I like that I can taste individual berries throughout the sip – cherries, currants, blueberries – but that there’s also a nice intermingling of the various flavours. A smooth, round, green sip of berries.

And yet?

Check, please.

[From my epic Instant-Thé order to Rome, October 2013.]

Haha, I added this tea to the database a few months back, and now BOOM! A whole slew of tasting notes! That Dammann calendar has really been getting around, and I enjoy seeing so many people try their teas.

I want to emphasize that translating ‘pain d’épices’ straight to ‘gingerbread’ is wrong – this is absolutely not supposed to taste like gingerbread, it’s supposed to taste like pain d’épices, which has a completely different flavour base. Sloppy, DM, very sloppy.

Reading about this tea, I didn’t love the idea of it, but I was still curious about the bitter orange note. In the bag, that’s mostly all I get, and it doesn’t disappoint at all, even if it threatens to maybe turn a little overly pungent. In the cup, though, it mellows out considerably.

Flavour wise, I’m equally surprised; I really wasn’t planning on liking this one, but I do. The orange comes through so well – something I’m not accustomed to in terms of DF; I think they mostly drop the ball on citrus altogether.

It’s a great Christmas tea – it would be perfect with actual pain d’épices (http://www.gustave.com/recettes/265/pain-epices.html) and right now, I will confess, I am eating a piece of candied orange dipped in dark chocolate, the final dregs of our pre-Christmas Dagnino shopping spree… and it goes insanely well together with this tea.

I’m very happy to have tried it, but as impressed as I am with its orangeity, this is not one I would feel a need to keep around.

[From my epic Instant-Thé order to Rome, October 2013.]

The base tea here looked really interesting – I didn’t recognize the leaf; apparently, it’s Vietnamese green tea.

In the bag, I get bamboo and rose more than anything – in fact, I find this very rosey throughout, even in the cup. This is a bit of a mystery, seeing as there is no trace of rose in the ingredient list. It might just be one of those taste overlaps – I’m pretty sure what I’m smelling and tasting is DF’s lychee. Thing is, both Butiki and Lupicia make beautiful lychee teas that I love, and that’s the taste profile I want – not this perfume-like, floral variety.

In no way is it a bad tea, but like many of DF’s other products, this seems so staged and contrived. It’s a colonial dream! Indochine! The Hanoi monsoons! If marketing must be based on this kind of historicized, romanticized dreamscape nonsense, can’t it at least be a less tainted fantasy?

I enjoy the base tea, but it’s more sensitive than DF’s usual sencha – there’s the slightest hint of bitterness in spite of the fact that I stayed well within the steeping parameters.

Overall, a nice tea, and thoroughly Dammann Frères-esque.

[From my epic Instant-Thé order to Rome, October 2013.]