Dammann Frères

Dammann Frères Advent Calendar – Day 7

While not what I consider to be the most exciting kind of tea, green mint blends are a classic for a reason. They’re perfect if you’re stuffed up or need something to settle your stomach after a heavy meal.

This particular blend looks like it employs spearmint and gunpowder (could be wrong on the mint). It also steeps up quieter than the dry leaf aroma implies and is quite smooth.

Dammann Frères Advent Calendar – Day 4

This is one rich tea – full of roasted chestnut, almond, and chocolate malt goodness. It also smells like marzipan which is my kryptonite. The profile has a lot in common with my seasonal favourite from Mariage Frères: Rouge d’Automne (but this oolong would be cheaper to order, so that’s a thought…).

Steep Count: 3

Dammann Frères Advent Calendar – Day 3

It’s lovely to see an orange flavoured white tea that’s balanced to compliment, not overpower the base tea or be particularly sweet. It leans towards aromatic citrus blossoms and a tranquil floral palette, rather than a lively, juicy-sweet citrus. Notes of cucumber, unripe melon, and other green things, make this tea feel like a day at the spa.

Imo, flavoured white tea blends often have chemistry problems — where the flavour pairings either diminish or clash with the original tea’s subtle but distinctive profile. This is gladly not the case here. Judging by taste and appearance, DF also made the decadent choice to use a silver needle variety. It pays off.

Steep Count: 3

Dammann Frères Advent Calendar – Day 2

Backlog: Both of my advent calendars gave floral green teas for day two. This one also has fruity notes, including a decadent lychee, canned peaches, and mellow but refreshing grapefruit. A perfect, bright tropical tea, for a bright sunny day (we are currently between atmospheric river episodes; it stormed last night and is supposed to pour most of the week starting tonight. So, I’m counting my blessings).

Steep Count: 2

Dammann Frères Advent Calendar – Day 1

Maybe I’m not mentally ready to start the December countdown yet. Luckily, DF decided to throw me a nice, neutral black tea blend on the first day. It’s not particularly exciting, but it’s makes for a solid breakfast or a late evening tea (hindsight: I drank this late in the evening and then was up all night lol). It was tasty without milk too!

Not something I’d go out of my way to purchase more of, but still nice. My dad would probably enjoy it the most.

AJRimmer Advent Day 5

If the packet didn’t say this was a black tea, I would have thought it was an oolong. The base tea is super smooth and has a bit of a floral note. The flavor came across a bit muddy to me. Maybe a bit of caramel and a bit of fruit? But overall, just a muddled jumble of sweetish flavor.

A sample from ashmanra to share with my dad, and we did that this morning before I go off traveling again. This tea is quite smooth and not terribly smoky as Lapsang scan get. A very pleasant and lingering aftertaste that would go well with a leftover piece of pie or even a spicy taco. Hmmm I must be hungry for lunch. It’s an enjoyable cup, thanks for sharing!

Tea mail from ashmanra! The flavor is light to start then lingers a while. This cup is more berry zinger to me than almond cookie but is a good distraction from the commercialism of Black Friday with everyone trying to get attention and sales. I did get some H&S for presents and am working on a Maya shopping cart.
Thanks for sending this my way ashmanra, I’m not sure I’ve ever tried Damian Freres!

Sipdown! (2 | 404)

Just such a nice, smooth and relaxing, subtly fruity green tea from Dammann. The base has a mellow haylike flavor that I just find so comforting. I feel like I’m tasting honeydew melon, which isn’t listed, so maybe that’s down to the cucumber. Some crisp green apple and a bit of the kiwi as well. The lemongrass is probably contributing to the herbaceous hay flavor.

Quite nice. I really enjoyed this one, but also happy to have it finished, since it was one of my oldest teas. :D

Ummmmm I was a little skeptical of this one at first because of my love/hate relationship with non-masala chai spiced blends. However, as soon as I smelt this tea in the mug I was in LOVE! It was the perfect mix of spice and syrupy baked apple for me and my tastes!

24th and final day of the Dammann Freres advent calendar, finishing only nine months late! I appreciate that they wanted to end with one that’s on theme, and I appreciate that it’s an herbal so I didn’t have to worry about what time of day I drank it or whether I’d already had caffeine. As for the taste itself, though… I don’t know why but it didn’t taste like what it’s supposed to for me. I tasted the woodsy rooibos, a touch of bite from the ginger, and oddly enough cherry and marzipan reminiscent of the Christmas Tea Blanc. But there’s not actually any almond flavor in here, and I didn’t get any of the pepper or orange in the taste. I did get the orange in the dry leaf aroma, but somehow it didn’t transfer into the mug. Overall a bit of an uneventful blend to end on. I didn’t hate it, I just wasn’t too enthused about it.

I’m glad that I tried this calendar but I won’t be ordering it again. The packaging is absolutely gorgeous; I’m definitely going to turn it into gift tags for this year’s holidays. But the teas themselves lean heavily on a black tea base that I don’t love and they tend to favor bergamot, which I also don’t love. I noticed when I was posting tasting notes that a lot of these blends reappear in the advent calendar every year, which makes sense but is also a good indicator that I can expect the same pattern to repeat in the future. So this one is lovely but just not for me. I did really like a lot of the herbal blends, though, so I’ll be filing that info away.

Day 23 of the Dammann Freres advent calendar. This one is so fun! It’s an herbal, but with a relatively unusual oat base. I would happily drink more of this, hot or cold. The oat is really cozy, the raspberry is sweet and gently tart, and there’s just an overall softness to the flavor that makes it go down oh-so-smoothly. I’d say this is one of the highlights of the whole calendar and easily one of my favorites.

Thanks to Cameron B for sharing this tea! I didn’t know what flavor it was supposed to be, and I would have guessed grape? Apparently it’s actually supposed to be chestnut/caramel? The black tea is pretty smooth, just not my favorite sort of flavor profile.

Day 22 of the Dammann Freres advent calendar. This doesn’t taste bad, per se, but the dry leaf definitely smells better (or at least more interesting) than the brewed tea tastes. The dry leaf smells very clearly of candy apple and maraschino cherry. I so wish that those flavors had translated more clearly into the brew itself! This uses the same black tea base as so many of the other flavored black teas in this advent calendar. It’s a bit dry, a bit malty, and rather reminds me of black bread. It also dominates the sip. The caramel apple and maraschino cherry flavors show up delicately, mostly at the end of the sip. I know that’s the thing with a lot of French teas, for the flavoring to be very delicate, but I find that frustrating when the base tea being used is the same one over and over again. Maybe if it was a base that I really loved, I’d be more open to it, but DF’s standard black tea base unfortunately just isn’t that.

Day 21 of the Dammann Freres advent calendar. An herbal, yay! I’m getting plenty of sweet, juicy, tart hibiscus and berry, but not any of the titular mint. Which is fine, it’s still tasty. And it’s good hot and cold. I added seltzer to the last bit of it and it made for a nice tea soda, so bonus points there.

Day 20 of the Dammann Freres advent calendar and it’s more bergamot! If you like bergamot, oh boy, is the Dammann Freres catalogue for you. I, alas, generally do not. I was happy to see another green tea, but the hopefulness that struck in me was significantly dampened by the strong aroma of bergamot as soon as I opened the packet. The bergamot definitely translates to the flavor, but thankfully there are also some other, pleasant notes: peach or apricot, and maybe a hint of cream or vanilla. But really that bergamot is overwhelming.

Wrote this up a couple of months ago but never posted it!

Day 19 of the Dammann Freres advent calendar. One nice thing about finishing this advent calendar so late is that I feel like a lot of these fruity teas are better suited for hot weather. This one, for example, begs to be tried iced, but I wouldn’t have done that in December. The dry leaf smells like fruit salad! Kiwi, apricot (or possibly the combo of mango and bergamot if experience with DF’s Bella Blanca is any guide), and something else I can’t place. Looking at the ingredients list, it’s kiwi, orange blossom, violet, bergamot, and peach. So my sense of smell clearly still isn’t 100% where it was before this latest bout of covid, and/or has trouble distinguishing between their yellow/orange stone fruit flavorings. Nonetheless, onwards to the tasting!

Mostly I taste kiwi, stone fruit, and bergamot. As it cools, the bergamot gets even stronger, which… why?! Either the bergamot is too heavy-handed or I’m really sensitive to it. I keep thinking the base tea is chun mee, but I don’t really know that or have any specific basis for believing it, just some little signal in my brain that keeps wanting to label it that – even though I haven’t had chun mee in years!

Day 18 of the Dammann Freres advent calendar. I was excited to see a white tea in here! This brews up a nice amber color. The dry leaf smells clearly of apricot, bergamot, and almond. The apricot and bergamot flavors are both pretty strong and balance each other nicely, though the overall impression is a touch more tart than I’d like. I think I’d be ok with it if it wasn’t also so drying; tart plus drying doesn’t leave the most delightful after-sensation. No idea where that almond went to!

I’m looking at the ingredients list now and it shows mango, not apricot. I had apricots for breakfast this morning (several hours ago), so that flavor is very fresh in my mind, and this still reads closer to apricot than mango for me. If I had to guess, I’d guess that my brain is reading the combination of the sweetness of the mango flavoring and the tartness of the bergamot flavoring as a tarter stone fruit. 

I iced the second steep and had it a couple of days later. When I came back to this tasting note to add details from that steep before posting, I was surprised to see how consistent the experience was. That iced steep also had a tart stone fruit flavor. Not overly sweet, but definitely fruity. What did come through in the second steep that I didn’t find much in the first was a slight floral note.

Disappointingly, I didn’t get much from the base tea here, besides that drying sensation and light-to-medium body. To the blend’s credit, the base doesn’t clash with the flavorings, and perhaps is supporting them so seamlessly that I just can’t tell. But after so so many black tea blends, I was hoping for a white tea that would really wow me. This is tasty enough but I’m not floored, you know?

Day 17 of the Dammann Freres advent calendar and it’s yet. another. bergamot blend on the same. black. base. Even though I am generally not a fan of Earl Grey and was dreading this one, I actually found it pretty enjoyable today. THIS bergamot with THIS base, today, is working for me. Possibly because it also isn’t muddled with a bunch of other flavors, so I don’t feel resentful that the bergamot is stealing the show. Here, I can appreciate the balance between the bergamot and the base, and that the bergamot doesn’t have that weird chemical-y taste that it sometimes can. 

ETA: Since it was late in the day, I had to stick half this mug in the fridge for the next day. Surprisingly, this is really good cold! 

Day 16 of the Dammann Freres advent calendar. I’m afraid my notes on this one are a little sparse, unfortunately. Hot, the most prominent notes were cherry and cranberry. I couldn’t taste the lemon so much as feel an acidic citrus juiciness at the end of the sip. I quickly decided that this would be better iced and let it cool/stuck it in the fridge. But then I drank it during a busy workday and forgot to take notes! I remember enjoying it. I definitely thought it was better iced than hot. But nothing sticks out in my memory as to particular tasting notes, or thinking “wow this is really good,” or even “wow this is really bad.” It did the trick, it was kinda different than what I normally drink which made it fun, but it ultimately just wasn’t super memorable.

Yay, Steepster is back!

Day 15 of the Dammann Freres advent calendar, and one of my favorites so far! Not because I can make out all of the ingredients in the brew, but because the overall effect is pitch-perfect. It’s got a strong cocoa flavor, like a robust cacao tea. The cinnamon here is dialed in at just the right ratio: definitely present and noticeable, thereby making the brew more robust, but still playing a supporting role and not overwhelming the whole thing. I got two good steeps out of this blend. This is one of the few days in this advent I’ve really wished for more of the blend.

Day 14 of the Dammann Freres advent calendar. This is… fine? It’s an Earl Grey with a lime twist. I’m not a big fan of Earl Grey generally, which means I don’t have a great sense for what differentiates a mediocre Earl Grey from an exceptional one. The bergamot and lime citrus are assertive but don’t totally overwhelm the brisk base. There’s nothing in here that tastes off or alcoholic to me. The bergamot hits first, followed by the lime, but the lime is definitely present and works well with the other flavors. I just fundamentally don’t enjoy the bergamot + black tea combo inherent to most Earl Grey blends, so it’s hard to enjoy this one.

I’m already a bit behind on Sipdown September, but going to do my best to catch up. My goal for the month includes finishing off everything I have left from last year’s advent calendars! I definitely ordered way too many and won’t make that mistake again this year.
This is Day 13 of the Dammann Freres advent calendar. For some reason I thought this was their regular chamomile tea, which I quite enjoy. Looking at it in my steeper, it’s actually a blend, which I would have realized if I had paid attention to the whole name and not just the first word. The chamomile in this is beautiful: big, plump, bright yellow flowers to make you think of spring and happiness. The dry leaf smells of sweet chamomile and an earthy note. In the brew, that translates to a floral chamomile, a hint of sharpness, and an earthy herbal note. It’s interesting to me that apple pieces are literally an ingredient here, but I’m still finding this to be a more floral than apple-y chamomile. Overall, one of my favorites from this advent calendar so far.