Mariage Frères

Okay okay, so I finally see what all the fuss is about. And now that I have tried it, I am torn.

First, this is an awesome tea. It is essentially the closest thing to my all-time favorite black tea (TWG 1837 Signature black) I have ever had. It has all the rich and dark wild European berries you’d find from blackberries in Germany’s Bavarian woodlands to the prized bilberries people hunt for in Lithuania’s peat-covered pine forests where they filmed “Robin Hood Prince of Thieves”. It successfully muddles them with fresh black Vietnamese sugarcane you’d buy at a roadside vendor on the way from Hanoi to Mai Chau. It’s got that unique hint of wild and rare flowers in the background. The black tea adds that subtle but perfect touch of tannins, as if you brewed your cuppa in some monastery’s old wood barrel they once used to age berry wines for decades. It’s fragrant, it’s fruity, it’s rich, it would have earned a perfect score of 100 and made it to my all-time top list, were it not for the fact I was already spoiled and had tried something a little bit better.

Marco Polo’s berries are ripe, dark, and sweet, but they’re missing that handful of indulgent over-ripe berries, the kind that fall apart with the slightest agitation and dye your hands deep blue and purple hues. It’s also missing that hint of hot caramel your mom would make on the stove with fresh cream and butter from the farmer next door. And this is why I am torn. TWG’s 1837 seems like a copy of Marco Polo (don’t let the 1837 fool you as those guys only started in 2008), but it’s not some cheap Asian knockoff. They actually managed to improve the already decadent flavors and even enrich them.

So, I love this stuff but it doesn’t dethrone my current favorite (scented/flavored) black tea. Bonus points, however, as this is much more readily available and cheaper, and I can have MF ship it direct to my house. Downside of 1837 is that I’ve tried the bags from Dean & DeLuca and they don’t do any justice to the stuff you buy at their salons in Asia.

I can’t wait to try them side by side, that should happen in about 6-7 weeks once I restock the 1837. But for now, I am sooooo happy to have over a pound of this in my cabinet, I will be drinking it daily for sure. I’m liking Mariage Freres more and more with every new tea I try from them – and while I haven’t moved on to their “purist” (read: not scented/blended/flavored) teas, it’s something I will definitely have to consider next time I order or drop in on them.

Another tea from Sil, I made a cup of this to enjoy with my breakfast: homemade suasage patties, greens, eggs, & almond flour pancakes topped with sauteed peaches, heavily spiked with cinnamon, nutmeg, & ginger. This breakfast required a potent tea, & this assam fit the bill. It’s a little on the astringent side, but nice & bassy.

This is definitely a magnificent, well balanced cuppa of quality tea I’d expect from our favorite brothers Mariage. The dry leaves have a very strong, intoxicating smell, like a shot of krupnik (a spiced honey liquor from my homeland) diluted with Amaretto.. smells almost like it has alcohol. Made me think I’m about to get drunk brewing a bit of Amaretto with maraschino cherries or some other divinely sweet desert drink.

The brewed tea loses the “alcohol” scent but the almond/spiced honey fragrance is joined by some smashed red berries, I’d say closest to strawberries and dark brandied cherries. One of the “spices” is definitely mahlab, which gives that bitter almond & cherry flavor. That part brought me back to Egypt the moment I took my first sip, but in some European-style cafe in Cairo next to a hookah/sheesha bar. I can’t quite pinpoint the other spices (saffron? black sesame?), but they are very well balanced, neither muting the concert of sweet honey with cherry amaretto nor fading into the background.

The brewing suggestion was 3-5 minutes at 95C water, 2.5g/20cl. I found that 200F, 2tsp/300ml at 3 minutes works best for me, as some bitter notes from the mahlab start becoming more pronounced at 5 minutes. 4 minutes and I already needed some sweetener to bring it back to balance, but the flavor was a bit more robust. When I brewed a cup for my mom at her house, I used freshly boiled water (no precise kettle) I’m guessing was around 205-210F for 4 minutes and it definitely needed sweetener.

Finicky and you’ll have to play around with the temps to get it just right for yourself, but when you nail it, it’s a real treat. Also got mine fresh direct from Mariage Freres, so maybe the longer steeping times are for leaves that have been sitting around for a little while.

Every Thursday night I go to the Toronto Reference Library to meet up with my writing critique group. The Balzac’s Cafe inside the library is one of the only places I know of in Toronto to stock Mariage Freres’ tea, but I certainly wish this wasn’t the case – I’d love to get more!

I don’t have any info about the steeping parameters (temperature, water/leaf ratio, etc) since I purchased this from the cafe, but here’s what I remember about the first steep I drank this evening:

- Yellow-green liquor that shaded down to light amber as the tea steeped and cooled down.
- Vegetal, but not too grassy. Some of the flavours I picked up in the steep were hay, spinach, and asparagus. Because of this, I suspect that it might be a first-flush tea.
- This tea is rather astringent; as I progressed further into the cup, my tongue got that “dried up” feeling that sometimes comes from astringency.
- This wasn’t particularly brothy, but it was riding the cusp between savory and sweet.

I’d really like to get my hands on a full package of Fuji-Yama, rather than having to get it through the cafe. Even so, this feels like the kind of tea that’s best reserved for special occasions or when you have the time to sip and savour. This is not a “sitting in front of the computer gettin’ shit done” kind of tea!

Bottom line: this tea was so good that I saved my disposable cup and the teabag, and brought the teabag home with me so I can see about resteeping it tomorrow morning!

I received a sample of this in the wonderful swap package Ysaurella sent me. Thank you so much for including this one.

Honestly, I didn’t look it up – I had no idea what what Prince Igor was or should be. Sometime I like not looking and then seeing if I “get it right”. Even after looking I’m not sure what “right” is.
“A rich blend of green Japan tea and black Ceylon tea, flavoured with rare citrus and other fruits.” That’s what the description is – kind of vague. I’m not getting any citrus at all. I’m agreeing with the other reviewers. For me this is red fruits, vanilla, and maybe a hint of floral. One of the other reviewer said it reminded them of Marco Polo – I can see that but I think what it really reminds me of is Fruits d’Alsace by Harney & Son’s. This is more “French”. I think French teas are more scented than flavored. It’s like you get a whiff of a scent and that translates into taste rather than being hit over the head with flavoring like the US teas are. Does that make sense to anyone other than me?
I really liked this (I know Fruits d’Alsace isn’t getting much love on my dash board tonight but I like it). It’s fruity and vanilla and not too floral for my tastes, it’s subtle and gentle, nice and comforting.
Thanks Ysaurella for introducing me to this one. It just makes me love the French style even more. :))

I really like this tea, but it definitely has a very strong, sweet marzipan flavor. It may be a little artificial tasting, but somehow I still really like it.

I opened this package over a month ago. Had it precisely twice being underwhelmed by it, and actually Anna, to whom I sent a sample, reviewed it before me. So I feel like, yeah, I should get to it, and just say something about it.

First thing, I am screwing up brewing this. I have not nailed it it, yet, though I think this tea for some reason does not like my tap water (some teas do not mind even some very grand teas, some do mind. Unpredictable) and I had to up the dosage from my first attempts. And today got distracted while brewing it, brewed it slightly too long and it showed in a bit of bitterness towards the end of my cup.

The dry leaf smells fabulous (which was why i got it), boozy! Rhum, and good rhum, none of that Bacardi or worse stuff, a sugary sweet scent so different from the other more usual sugarcane derivatives. With vanilla and a hint of chocolate. Awesome! Beyond awesome , count me in. 100 grams please.

But I am still trying to crack how to brew this. This third time, it was better, a discernible taste closer to the scent. But I still think I can get more out of this tea, must experiment and not forget it.

I remember reading cteresa’s note for this four months back and laughing so hard at the following, “…have no idea why they call it samourai, I can´t think of anything less samurai like than this tea.”

Now I’m sitting here with the remaining half of her hard-earned sample – there’s no way I can top the sheer hilarity of her review, though, so I’m not even going to try.

Scent wise, this is very lotion-from-l’Occitane, in other words, absolutely not for me. Smelling this for more than five minutes would give me a headache – it’s too medicinal. Brewed, it’s not so bad at all, much less lotiony, with hints of citrus, and with the tea base (which is quite nice) coming through distinctly. There’s a jubilant, grassy, vegetable note in there, too – I’m guessing it’s the MF bergamot – I’ve never tried theirs before.

In the cup, this just blooms. It’s very floral, and I like floral. I wouldn’t go as far as to call this a complex tea, but the tea base adheres to MF’s usual high standard (although it tastes surprisingly green to me) and I’m not having any problems finishing the cup. I also wouldn’t turn down a second cup, but I wouldn’t buy it – it simply isn’t something I crave as a staple. Maybe it’s because I’m just not samurai material.

Thanks, cteresa, for letting me try the least samurai-like tea in the world.

[Spin-off sample from the second round of the EU Travelling Box, spring 2014.]
[Sample polished off in Rome, February 2014.]

The rooibos version of this is one of my favourite reds, so I had to try the black. It has very little to do with the familiar one in my cupboard, though.

Scent wise, the dry tea has a thick, buttery richness to it that I recognized so well but couldn’t quite place. And then it struck me. Rice porridge. In Sweden we make a difference between rice porridge (runnier) and rice pudding (baked in the oven, more of a cake-like texture) and the former is mainly served as a traditional Christmas dish, warm, with milk, and with cinnamon and sugar sprinkled on top.

It can be a bit of a hassle to make the actual porridge, as it easily burns (the rice is cooked in milk) – my mom has a sneaky trick, though; she takes it off the heat after it comes to a boil, and then wraps the whole thing in blankets to keep it warm until it’s time for Christmas dessert. It usually rests for five or six hours, which allows the rice to slowly cook and swell. Unwrapped, the porridge has the perfect texture and temperature, and it’s seriously the best trick ever.

And this is exactly what it smells like, on Christmas Eve, when that lid is removed.

I’m pretty sure the rice porridge effect is what’s supposed to pass for marrons glacés, but I haven’t had those since I was very small, so the rice layer is simply much further up in my memory stack.

The tea base is very pleasant, classic Mariage Frères, and I know this is one that would have appealed to me immensely if there hadn’t been such an outlandish scent/flavour parallel. As it is, I don’t really know how to feel about the whole thing. Every other sip is, ‘I like it..’, and every other, ‘…but it’s weird.’

Thanks for adding this and messing with my head, cteresa!

[Sample from the second round of the EU Travelling Box, spring 2014.]

Right, so how do I even explain the origin of this sample? Well, we’re doing the second round of the EU swap box, and cteresa forgot to put one of the samples she wanted to send out in the box… so she sent an envelope, too, a few days later. Of course, seeing as cteresa is cteresa (i.e. completely awesome) she added even more tea samples (hey, empty envelope, gotta fill it).

Among these were a couple that I’ve been dying to try, including this one. I have a pretty decent MF reseller here, but they haven’t had Jamaïque in stock since I moved back.

My prediction for this tea was that it would be like Vanille des Iles with a twist – and yes, that’s more or less what I find myself with here. Scent wise, there’s much more caramel in VdI, making for a rounder, sweeter profile. In terms of Jamaïque, though, there is this perfect, boozy note topping off the vanilla base. The same goes for the brewed tea, even though I find myself struggling more with flavour recollection than scent recollection this time around. In short, however – Jamaïque fronts less caramel and more booze.

It’s a very enjoyable, smooth cup, but just as in the case of VdI, I would have enjoyed a more exuberant vanilla presence.

Thank you, cteresa!

[Spin-off sample from the second round of the EU Travelling Box, spring 2014.]

Ysaurella sent this to me in our swap and it was the perfect tea this morning to help me focus on the last of my work that i need to get done before i can run around the house like a crazy person trying to get ready. I’m trying to get in at least 3 sipdowns before i go lol just so i can end this month at 140. A nice round number :) It’s also a good way for me to make sure i’m drinking and relaxing a little.

This is a pretty tasty tea and i can see why it reminds ysaurella a little of the du loup (i miss that tea!) There is caramel and vanilla here, though the caramel mostly comes through as sweetness. I’d be interested in picking this up again if i ever get the chance to go shopping in france grin

This one came as a surprise in my swap with Ysaurella.

For some reason, teas with fig smell like baby food to me. The fig here is apparent, yet not overwhelming. I’m finding it most in the aftertaste and scent. There’s a bit of a floral quality that drowns out the fig in the initial taste. If this one didn’t have a floral quality and was only fig and vanilla, I may have been able to get on board. It’s more up my alley than Figue Fraiche.

Thanks for the opportunity to try more from Mariage Freres Ysuarella!

P.S. I love how “fish broth” is a flavour option, but “fig” isn’t.

Ah, figs. I do love them, although more so cooked than fresh… we have two huge fig trees at this house, and the fresh just plain overwhelmed me last fall. Lots of cleanup, lots of mess everywhere, lots of animals (skunks!) coming to feast on them as they plunked to the ground.

This tea ? It’s a rich, baked fig to me, however much less sweet and with a creamy black base. Yep, this I do like!

Ysurella you sure do know how to pamper someone with French teas. Thank you so much for this!

Hm. Fig tea, like Figue Fraiche? Sounds yummy. I’m getting little fig out of this however, although there is the mouthfeel of having just bitten into one. Something rich and fruity, with some vanilla. Or perhaps I underleafed, and this required a bit more tea than I’m used to? It’s pleasant, however likely something I’ll finish up and then leave it off my wish list in the future.

Thank you to Ysurella for sharing this with me; I doubt I would have been able to try it otherwise.

Another oolong from Ysaurella it appears that today was the day that i decided to drink a number of the teas she sent me. This one, is an interesting tea. I an enjoying it, though it doesn’t do nearly the same things to me as it does my favourite companion from france :) However, this could almost….almost teach me to enjoy oolongs! thank you for sharing!

mmmmm tasty delicious tea before the panic sets in! thanks Ysaurella!

(yes crappy tasting note! but i have things to do! OMG! running out of time!)

Ysaurella sent this my way and after smelling it, i didn’t actually think i would enjoy this one. Well, I was wrong. :) It won’t be my favourite MF tea but there is something intriguing about this particular blend even though there is a note in there that confuses me. This is a pleasant fruity tea with maybe a hint of floral to it, but clearly nothing overly strong or i wouldn’t like it. The fig is hiding in this a little but it’s there if you look for it.
Thank you madam! this was a pleasant surprise :)

Sipdown. Had this one yesterday when my husband decided he needed to try and kill me and the kiddo lol. I wasn’t feeling well and we wanted to get out for a bit….that being said, a short hike was whaT I was up for…..instead it was 8km of slogging through mud. Fun, but a lot more than what I was up for. (12 teas!)