Les Siffleux

Such a weird tea.

I was looking for some herbal teas to enjoy in the evenings this weekend, and I came across this one. I haven’t had it in years, and when I did have it I found it to be rather confusing. Both the make, and flavor wise. I figured I’d make a little mini mug of it to drink while continuing searching through my stash…

Firstly, I think I used a higher “powder” to water ratio this time. I’m putting powder in brackets because it’s kind of congealed into a sheet within the bag, like a thick slab of fruit leather in a way. I had to tear a piece off. My cup was very, very dark brown coloured with a slightly sludgy quality to it from the suspended fruit pulp and other ingredients.

Taste wise, I do get the bright and tart fruitiness of the cranberry but it’s followed up be quite a strong earthy root-like taste. A tinge of chocolate, but mostly the sort of intense and slightly burnt taste of roasted chicory. Definitely a little bitter and unpleasant…

I don’t know. This one is still super weird to me.

This is one of the ‘teas’ that came with in my MTL Tea Festival box a little while back. I’ve put off trying it because I’m very confused on how it’s supposed to be prepared. It’s not really a powder, but it’s kind of ground down and clumped together like a sort of sheet of… mix!? I don’t know how to describe it.

The steeping instructions are completely in French and also vague; I tried to google translate it and the general gist was to “Put one spoon in water and infuse” but I don’t understand if that’s a teaspoon or a tablespoon as well as whether I should be using an infuser or not because there’s definitely part of this blend that’s fine enough to go through and infuser but also slightly larger fruit bits that would be caught by one and are also large enough to sink instead of creating a “suspension” were I to try and just dissolve this into a mug…

It’s all just very confusing.

Ultimately I ended up taking two ‘lumps’ (somewhere between a teaspoon and a tablespoon worth) and putting that in a paper tea filter. I don’t think I should have used the filter because the chocolate/cocoa kind of ‘melted’ and got very sludgy and wouldn’t get through the filter super well. Eventually I tore the filter open and let it all just go loose into the mug. It tasted like a very weak/thin hot chocolate with a hint of cranberry. The last few sips were definitely just lots of fruit that had sunk to the bottom of the mug.

I’m just baffled by this product.