Mariage Frères

I am having this tea in honor of the wonderful reviews of French Teas that Dinosara is posting lately! Delightful!!!

It entered my mind that I have not had this one plain as of yet. I think I had a plain second steep, with sugar, but… today is the day for an absolutely sans additions cup!

It is utterly delicious. I love how much more pronounced the floral aspect is, but it is still so strawberry, and so… not chocolate not vanilla but… something! Something so good, subtle and French :) I love it.

I once read someone else’s review (not on Steepster, maybe on Chowhound?) that said “Don’t you dare put milk and sugar into this tea!!!” and my feathers were ruffled because… strawberry shortcake tea!!! But now I understand why that person might have emphatically stated this. You do miss the nuances with milk and sugar. Point taken :)

Also, completely different French tea company, but want! want! want!:

http://www.illyusa.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/prod_tea_tea_gifts-and-accessories_1825-tea-sampler-gift-set-66098

I just finished wrestling with frozen pipes (all is well after hours of water running, heat raising, and blow drying!) AND I finished a paper yesterday which has a lot to do with my childhood, so I’m a bit of an emotional whirlwind right now. I figured, eh, why not drink a tea that always makes me want to cry from nostalgia and get real nice and upset!?

!!!

Strangely enough, this time the strawberry, cakey, childhood birthday taste didn’t make me too upset, because some new facets of the tea revealed themselves today. I used milk and agave instead of sugar and half and half, and I can really taste the floral aspect of this tea – specifically a rose taste. I’m really enjoying it! Also, in with the cake is a bit of a chocolate flavor, maybe you would say a cocoa powder flavor. Like a cake made with cocoa powder and not chocolate. It’s so faint that I keep saying to myself maybe it’s just the cakey flavor – no this tasted chocolatey – no, wait…

It’s so subtle, multifaceted, delicious, and beautiful. A most extraordinary flavored tea! Gosh I love the French.

The little girl across the street is having a birthday party on the lawn – it is in turns adorable (They are all in pink! They are all screaming!) and horrifying (They are all in pink! They are all screaming!). I had a Pavlovian response and started craving Marco Polo with cream and sugar – aka Good Bakery Strawberry Shortcake tea – aka my childhood birthday cake tea. This is so good. It is so powerfully nostalgic that I can only have it every now and again lest it break my heart! I can’t stop thinking about my grandparents who are gone, the old neighborhood which is gone…Gah! Who would imagine a mere cup of tea could send you off like this!!!

I let this go to 5 minutes today (how I usually steep most black teas) to see what would happen – NOW I’m getting the flowers! When I want to weep with nostalgia, I’ll steep to 4 minutes, and when I want strawberries and roses, I’ll steep to 5 minutes. WOW.

With 1 teaspoon of sugar and a splash of half and half, this tea tastes exactly like the incredible strawberry shortcake baked at Isgro Pasticceria in the Italian Market area of Philadelphia. Juicy perfectly ripe strawberries, moist barely sweet cake redolent of good vanilla, and fresh whipped cream. I had this cake every year for my birthday my entire childhood. This tea is moving me to tears.

The flavor is incredibly delicate and not artificial in the least. It’s an absolute work of art as far as I’m concerned. I never want to be without it, and it was worth every penny.

EDIT: decided to resteep – very pleasant strawberry taste but the cake and whipped cream and tea are gone. Tastes too sweet. The next time I make this tea, I might resteep then drink the resteep without cream and sugar.

Tried this strawberry scented green tea again today, my second steep, and carefully watched the minutes tick by.

The liquid is a lovely light green tinted liquid. Where I thought yesterdays loud candy coated scent had faded, it returned but in a subtler fashion. The tea in and of itself is pleasant. It isn’t a mouth full of berries despite its fragrance. I expect Crunch berries but find a refined delicate green. And yes, if you watch the clock the bitterness is non existent! LOL Lesson learned.

And today, I did find the perfect place for this tea. I had taken my truck up to Mt Baker and followed a gravel road along the Sauk River. I can only assume they are still logging the area because the smell of a trampled and cut wood was everywhere. It was sad, hauntingly beautiful and empty… I had the old road, rivers and woods to myself. Poor Grumble took a beating (and he, my truck, just got a new paint job :( ) but despite this mini pitfall I found the view required a gentle cup of strawberry scent green tea. It was but for a moment but I could and should have been sipping it silently there resting in thought on a felled tree resting on the river bank watching the sun scoot across the cradling snow entombed mountains.

Not a favorite but well worth a try… on a back road, sitting on a tree, listening to nature and alive in thought.

Mariage Freres has made up for their Lipton-eques blunder with this one. Having not yet tried Marco Polo I can only image this tea to follow in the same vein. It is berry berry Berry smelling. Like something akin to Smuckers strawberry filling or jam.

As a kid there was a breakfast treat that came with a packet of strawberry jam. You could use it to decorate whatever it was it came with… I think is was a pop-tart or something similar. This is spot on.

Out of the bag it is strawberry shortcake’s best friend but when steeped becomes buttery and almost hints at its pound cake or angel food beginnings. So far, I am in love. However I don’t know when I would especially crave this tea but I will get back to you while on deployment on that. I can see this sweet berry tea as having great annoyance properties that could come in handy. Perfume free office spaces be warned with this brew!

Oh and since this is a green tea, go easy on the brewing time less it provide you with a karate chop to the palate. For all the berry in the world can’t hide a bitterly neglected (western brewed) tea. :)

Well that’s the end of this tea, sadly. I got a couple good steeps out of the last scoop of leaves and while the tea itself has good staying power the sweet cherry flavour…not so much.

Thanks so much Takgoti for sharing this one with me. :)

Out of curiosity I steeped this longer to see if I could maybe get a bit more cherry flavour out of the tea. In the end all I got was stronger white. Actually that does seem to be a quality of flavoured white tea. *shrug *

This is such a girly tea with all its airy, sugary, flowery decadence – I feel so feminine drinking it! XD

2nd steeping of these leaves. The white tea is more pronounced, vegetale and nutty-tasting in turns. The candied cherry flavour has morphed into a sort of sugary, syrupy taste with no real flavour apart from ‘sweet’.

Not a tea I’m going to rave about, I think, but still very nice all the same. I need to try more of this to be sure what my opinion on it is.

Another tea from the lovely Takgoti.

The scent of this tea reminds me of cherries, but not the fresh, juicy sort; it’s more of a candied smell. It brings to mind those sugared blossoms that are sometimes used to decorate cakes.

Taste-wise mostly what I’m getting is the white tea (which is quite nice, BTW) with a hint of something floral and sweet at the end of each sip.

This darling sprang forth from the bag smelling of summer fruits kissed by the sun, dried and cradled by black tea.
Brewing it brought about more of the same. The flowers were a charming addition but this tea smells very much of pulp. Not berries or rich red fruits nor was it the hiss of dried orange. This sings of the sun and the former life of a stone fruit. I am reminded of peach or apricot and their golden flesh… more so that area of change where it turns red as it kisses the stone. The brew if fair in the way of black tea and perhaps I didn’t nab enough leaves. It is of a nice taste and I think this blend would be perfect iced with peaches on a summer day.
It’s lovely… cheery… I will have to remember this brew when the sun shines again. It screams summer… and is very enjoyable plain. I think my grandfather would have liked this tea.

Honestly, in my re-drinking of this tea… it tastes like an over priced Lipton. Nice… pleasant and safe. Tee-hee and ho-hum.

This is damned near perfect. I love this tea so much. I wish it was easier to come by. if anyone has a good source for this, please do let me know.

It’s very complex and of the highest quality. A slight floral aspect, but not fake like a rose water type fo tast. This is very good iced too.

Almost forgot to log this from earlier. It was nice. Onto the whites and greens…

This doesn’t have a rare or unusual smell to set it aside from other black teas and it’s not an over powering black tasting tea…but it it good and a great afternoon pick-me-up!

This is personally one of my very favorite teas. The vanilla is strong when you open the tin and warm in your cup. I find Mariage Freres never lets me down. Sweet and with a lovely color, I find it is wonderful alone or even with a snack. I even made a very nice iced tea out of it. I do not suggest a hot cup for a heavy meal, but it can be a great dessert tea. The iced tea can actually make a nice friend for a sandwich or picnic on a sunny afternoon.

I’ve been saving this sweet little monster for when I really need a pick me up. And I need one today so I’m busting this out. I fully anticipate going at least 4 steeps, possibly 6. The sweet, sugary, candy-flower, maripan insanity will actually last that long (or at least it has in the past). I’m half convinced it keeps on going because it is so determined to make me happy. It’s just that kind of tea.

I pretty much adore this tea but I think that it is kind of odd that I do. It smells so sweet! Like little-ball-of-marzipan-candy sweet. And the taste! It’s a light, sweet, floral and slightly earthy tea with faint notes of wood or nuts and then a lovely sweet floral poof at the end and then a chaser of marzipan that can in no way be natural but I still luf it muchly. Just thinking of this tea gives me the urge to sprinkle glitter and candied flowers over everything and dance around a garden in a white gauzy dress.

(The second steep (also at 3min) is my favorite. The marzipan and flowers thing doesn’t change (if anything it may be a little sweeter), it just smoothes out a little compared to steep number one. I still need the glitter, candied flowers, garden and dress to really set the mood.)
2.5g/5oz

The other time I had this, Cynthia Carter commented on my tasting note, asking if the frosting/cherry flavor could be almond. Initially, I dismissed the idea because this don’t taste nutty at all…. but then I started thinking. It actually could be a bit like marzipan and that’s very much almond. And with that in mind, I took a sniff of these leaves.

Yep, marzipan. For Christmas the hubby got these neat little fruit shaped marzipan candies and he let me sneak a little bite… it smells just like those little candies.

Brewed up, the tea smells both a little richer and a little lighter than the marzipan-smelling leaf. There is a syrupy base note and a floral top note. I chose to decrease the steep time on this to see if that made the first steep happier for me (last time the second steep was my favorite). Ah yeah, I think that does it for me. The dark taste isn’t as obvious – still there but in what I feel is better balance (but then I like things light and sweet) – and the light taste is still there and sparkly sweet and floral.

I let the husband have a sip (and he stole three more) and he compared it to a cherry flavored gum (which I can see and once he said that, I started thinking about Fruit Stripe gum) and very strongly flavored, perhaps too much for him (an interesting opinion for someone that has been know to eat seasoning straight but okay). For me, on the other hand? I love it. It is definitely not mild but I really enjoy it.

I’m bumping up the rating because I’ve found myself thinking about this tea some in the past week since I’ve had it. It’s really different and no way could I drink it every day, but now that I’m out, I think I might buy some more. Like, right now.

3.5g/7oz

I was intrigued by takgoti’s description of this tea being like ‘sugared flowers’ and she was kind enough to send me some so I could see for myself. I have to say, I agree with her. This tea smells like a little pale pink flower on a white wedding cake, made from sugar, with a faint, subtle sparkle. I can see very clearly in my head. Which is kind of weird. The tea smells like this too, almost exactly, but with a note of something underneath. Part of my mind says Play Doh – the homemade kind – but the sane part of me says no way. Actually, it smells nothing like that but for some reason, I keep making the connection. It’s weird.

The taste is both similar and different from the smell. That pale pink sparkly flower is still floating around, but now it’s got a little company – alcoholic cherry blossoms perhaps? Not drunk – they haven’t been drinking or anything – more like if small, pale pink, slightly sparkly flowers were to be made into a dessert wine and then a little of that splashed into the tea. I’m thinking it is the tea base in here giving it a slightly darker, richer (but still sweet in its own way) flavor but I don’t know enough about white tea to guess as to what the base would be or what additional flavors it is bringing to the table.

I find the two tastes – the sweet and the dark – to be quite a contrast. It’s like this tea isn’t sure if it wants to be a geisha or a member of the Cult of Cute. So it’s a maiko with a really cute Sanrio dangle on her phone. But I kind of like it for that because I’ve met a maiko with a really Sanrio dangle (okay, it wasn’t actually a Sanrio dangle but it was a Print Club with a Sanrio frame so close enough) so this tea is making me think of the evening I spent in Gion. Which is weird because I was in Gion in fall, not spring so no cherry blossoms. But anyway…

Yeah, this tea is really different but I’m kind of groovin’ on it. Sweet and cute but with a darker exotic flair. The second steep (also @ 3:00) tends to lean more towards the cute pink side and I’m really liking that (yes, everyone is shocked, I know). There’s still the darker syrup-iness underlying the sweet taste but it doesn’t seem to be thumb wresting the cute anymore. The second steep is my favorite so far but the taste is strong enough that I’m going to keep going.