Mariage Frères

The aroma smells like Christmas to me with cinnamon, clove, vanilla, ginger, orange, red cherry and caramelized brown sugar. The tea seems like a good orange pekoe from somewhere. A classic ‘tea orange’ color and taste. I can also taste the incense the tea was shipped with ;P It sips brisk and mineral-woody astringent but turns thick before the swallow. The aftertaste is of warm spices and caramel; vanilla-cola syrup lingers lightly in the back.

I sense a faded opulence. Everything’s more faint than I expected or maybe that’s the style of Mariage Frères? Still, the bags from White Antlers went quickly and I’m glad I got to try another French tea :)

Adventaggedon Day 13 – Tea 4/6

Shockingly, I’ve found a green tea from Mariage Freres that I would actually buy more of! I’ve been super strongly craving DT’s Cherry Blossom matcha and waiting for that one to come up in the advent, so when I saw this I kind of had a “Well, that’ll do” feeling about it. It was actually very delicious and more than satisfying for that craving!

The flavour is very direct and straight forward cherry blossom, with a round floral quality that overtakes the mass of the green tea. The slight hint of oceanic, grassy green tea actually compliments well and breaks up a bit of what might otherwise be a pretty perfumed profile. What really sells the tea, though, is the pleasant and lingering sweetness on the palate after each sip. Heavenly!

Advent Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/CIwUJTwAreh/

I’ve been watching a lot of Danganronpa lets plays lately, so I thought I was pretty clever with this photo. If you’re not familiar with the game series, the character on screen in the background of the photo is named Sakura.

Adventaggedon Day 12 – Tea 1/6

Definitely a pretty basic tea and not really anything going on here aside from your typical Earl Grey flavours. From my understanding the “twist” to this is in the visual of the dry leaf, but given that the advent teas are tea bags that’s completely lost…

Is it a bad Earl Grey? No, and it was actually a nice way to start my day. However, Mariage Freres blends are pretty pricey – even their “cupboard staples” like Earl Greys. Since I’m not a big drinker of them anyway, I’d never shell out the dollars or go out of my way to get this one.

Advent Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/CIt0BTTAlN9/

Adventaggedon Day 10 – Tea 2/6

This was pretty nice, and a good break up from sweet or otherwise intense flavour profiles from the day – mostly chamomile and mint, but with an undertone of citrusy/lemony verbena I thought this silky herbal profile was an unexpectedly pleasant cuppa!

Nothing I’d go out of my way to have again, but I probably would have ignored it if I was just browsing the MF website so I appreciate having it introduced to me!

Advent Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/CIov0XiAU8T/

Adventaggedon Day 9 – Tea 5/6

At some point where I’m not cripplingly tired/exhausted, I want to look at the ingredients list for this tea. It was my first tea of the morning, and I thought it was pretty tasty but also very weird. The little tag described it as a sunny citrus flavour, but I thought it seemed pretty dense and indulgent/sweet (by French tea standards). The first flavour that came to mind was actually chocolate and the second was bergamot.

I liked it, but it didn’t seem to match with the description at all.

Advent Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/CIl-_dtAlPw/

Sipdown 10-2021
There was a bit remaining from Dustin’s advent, so this is a small sipdown…but it still counts! I actually enjoyed this cup more than the first. I didn’t add any honey as I did with the previous cup, and the vanilla is much more prominent.

Advent from Dustin Day 9
Very excited to open this selection this morning as it has been on my tea wishlist for awhile! I was also craving a black tea, so this was absolutely perfect.
The base is malty and has a bit of a chocolate note, which is wonderful with the caramel/vanilla flavoring. I’d imagine this would be excellent with a bit of cream.

Adventaggedon Day 8 – Tea 3/6

Japanese green tea!? Nooo…

Advent Photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/CIjkTExg-d5/

Adventaggedon Day 7 – Tea 3/6

This is the first tea from the Mariage Freres advent that I’ve had to add to the database, and to be totally honest I’m just too tired tonight to fill out the entry properly – maybe tomorrow if I have more energy…

This is what I started my day with though, with a little bit of matcha honey added after trying a few sips of it. It’s basically another green with with florals – pretty jasmine heavy as well, but a smidge of something citrus-y. It reminded me a lot of Jasmine in Love from earlier in the week. I wasn’t huge into Jasmine in Love, and I liked this one even less because it didn’t have the same rose notes. Not that it’s bad – it’s not. It’s just not really my jam. I feel like that was true about a lot of teas today – most are fine teas, but just really not my thing…

Advent Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/CIgyLwTgXrz/

Adventaggedon Day 6 – Tea 5/6

Ask and you shall recieve! I said earlier in the week that I wanted to try Marco Polo on other tea bases, particularly white and rooibos, and today’s tea was the rooibos version! I was definitely very excited digging into it this afternoon.

It’s very nice – the same sweet and robust rhubarb from the OG Marco Polo but maybe a little less floral/perfumed in its undertones!? The rooibos used here is smooth and has a honeyed graham/hazelnut quality that is delicious and works well with this fruity flavour. I think I actually enjoy this version of Marco Polo much more and I would totally buy this to add to my ever growing line up of rooibos based rhubarb teas…

Advent Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/CIeSOftgdHs/

Adventaggedon Day 5 – Tea 2/6

This was my least favourite tea from today’s advent round up – it really just tasted like a very straightforward jasmine green tea with just a hint of rose. Now, both the green tea and the jasmine seemed quite fresh, and good quality – but I just really don’t like jasmine green tea at all. Maybe more rose could have made it at least a little bit more appealing to me personally?

It’s a shame – I had to look up the tea on MF’s site to make the Steepster entry for it and the loose leaf is actually really pretty and seems to have a lot of rose in it. Maybe I just got a poor representation in my teabag from the advent today…

Advent Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/CIbj3zAAE0C/

Adventaggedon Day 4 – Tea 1/6

This was a really pleasant surprise this morning, and on a few levels! Firstly, it was nice seeing an oolong in the advent because I’m pretty sure that Mariage Freres has a relatively limited oolong selection and I definitely think of them as focusing much more largely on black and green teas…

Secondly, it was a surprise because of the butterfly pea flower in the tea! I had just assumed that the “Blue” in “Opera Blue” came from the oolong tea base, which is sometimes called blue tea. So imagine my shock when it started steeping blue! I would have assumed that butterfly pea flower would just be a bit too gimmicky/novelty for a company like MF that seems to take themselves very seriously – but I guess it’s made it enough into the mainstream that they’re using it. Ultimately the tea wound up really coming out more of a green colour than anything else, though…

The taste was nice! Forward vanilla notes with a floral undertone, I think largely from the greener oolong that was used but maybe also in part from the vanilla flavouring itself. It’s also fruity, and while it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what the fruit was I’m leaning more towards it being a sweet orange but it does have some red fruit-ishness to it as well. I was probably influenced by the colour, but it reminded me a little bit of blue curacao. Smooth, soft and delightful overall.

I think this is something I would actually order – but in loose leaf instead of sachets!

Advent Photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/CIZC-u1gDbW/

Adventaggedon Day 2 – Tea 6/6

This was actually my first tea from today – it wasn’t a favourite because the green tea was pretty grassy and strong in terms of flavour, and it also seemed to steep quite quickly without much forgiveness for over steeping. In other words, it got bitter quickly. That said, the simple and straight forward lemon note was nice – basically just like your average, no frills lemon hard candy. A classic approach to a lemon tea.

Today’s advent photos: https://www.instagram.com/p/CIUQkZLAFJz/

Adventageddon Day 1 – Tea 1/6

It’s advent season, baby!! I barely slept last night waiting to dig into all my advents this morning, and I was just flying through tasting things over the course of the day!! I was so delighted reading through everyone’s advent tasting notes throughout the day.

FYI – this is my advance warning for anyone doing the 52Teas/Geek + Tea advents that I’m treating them as one “whole” advent (since they’re 12 days each) and will be alternating days between the two. That means I’m going to be doing tasting notes for both advents now so there may be spoilers! For today, I’ll do my 52Teas tasting note in the middle of my block of six advents so that there’s some advent cushion/warning for people who might want to avoid the spoiler…

This tastes very French to me – and it’s sort of hard to describe what I mean by that but just in general French teas have such a specific blending/flavouring style. I enjoyed it a lot; at first I thought it might have bergamot in it – but drinking through the cup I think maybe it was just a very nice, fragrant orange with some floral undertones. Smooth, and full bodied and accompanied by lovely notes of vanilla and butterscotch as well.

I’ve not had a lot of teas from Mariage Freres, so I’m quite excited to taste through the rest of the advent!

Advent pics from today: https://www.instagram.com/p/CIRXCaNAoMq/

This is the most mysterious, creamy but happy tea i have in my stash. I wish i was rich enough to gift a can to all of my friends and family. I like this tea a lot. I suspect it has vanilla, and thats funny because i HATE vanilla flavoured tea. I guess it’s done very well.

I´m not 100% sure this is the cardomome black tea I´m having these days, as I actually bought it quite some time ago, in an independent tea shop in France, by the weight, so I only have the aspect and name to guide me.
I´m decided to finish the loose tea I have been “stockpiling” the last few years, and this one was kept in a closed tin, so there´s actually still some nice aroma´s (the sweet touch of the cardamon) to be observed. Once steeped, the strength of the black tea is complemented by a subtle but enjoyable cardamome (sweet, nutty) flavour.
Nice as a late morning drink, nowadays – in corona lockdown times – when I return home from my permitted morning walk .

A beautiful one. I love this tea.

Nope, the green and black Marco Polo are far superior.

Shmeh. The name was more exciting than the tea.

I prefer this to the Marco Polo black tea.

A more floral orange blossom (traditonal) rather than citrusy. I actually prefer citrusy but this is lovely too.

Sweet gentle and minty

Just an average Jasmin. Nothing super exciting here.