Mariage Frères

one of my other teas from today. delicious. I’m so sad that i’m starting to get to the end of this one AND i totally forgot to pick up french breakfast from holts this year…so once it’s gone, i’m SOL in the MF delicious black tea department for another 10 months or so. poop.
on the plus side? it’s snowing! here’s hoping it’ll keep it up all night so i can have snow day breaks tomorrow when i insist on working from home finally.

soo good. I’m going to be sad when this one is all gone, though maybe holts will have this or french breakfast in stores @ christmas. Over priced of course but i will splurge knowing i won’t be back to paris for a while haha

noms. god i love this tea. Delicious, chocolatey goodness.

So many things going on, so little time to be on steepster. I’m still drinking tea, but we’re down to the last 44 days to go before the wedding and with my other half landing some fantastic job opportunities, i’m flying mostly solo these days with the house, wedding prep and day to day work things. Last weekend was my bachlorette and now i’m finding i’m enamoured with wine. and tea. and wine. and tea…lol the best of every world!

this tea is still a happy place for me. I’m really glad i have the fortune of having amazing tea friends who find things for me :) thanks again MissB!

sometimes you just need a good cup of delicious. This was it for me today. :)

still love this tea. So glad that i was able to get more, thanks to MissB. I feel like i now have a much better handle on the teas that i love from MF.

backlogging some more lol

I think this is the last of my backlogged teas and one that i’m a fan of. I think the more i drink this, the happier i am with it. Just something really enjoyable about the chocolatey notes and the malt in this one.

Final Count:126

today was kind of drink whatever i want day. I picked this one since it’s been calling to me ever since MissB was awesome enough to find it for me, before we knew i was randomly going to france myself. i really love this one…both this one and french breakfast make a wonderful cup of tea in the morning. of course i’ll have to see how i feel about paris breakfast once i get around to opening that one too :) thanks again missb! this was a great treat today!

sipdown! (138) and this one goes on the shopping list. It’s like the more elegant cousin of bolder breakfast..smoother, more delicious and less artificial tasting (not that bolder breakfast is artificial tasting but in comparison…). I adore this tea. It won’t replace wedding imperial for me but it WILL have a spot in my cupboard….someday. I hope!

…just need to find a decent source for MF teas without stupid shipping! Thank you again cteresa!

for breakfast today, i’m have 3 breakfasts… scrambled eggs with lots of tasty things mixed in, american breakfast and french breakfast lol I wanted to see how the MF breakfast teas stacked up, since cteresa was kind enough to part with a sample of her American Breakfast. It’s been compared to wedding imperial, which is one of my favourite MF teas – so i’ve been excited to taste this one.

This is a great blend. It’s slightly malty, but sweet and chocolatey (not cocoa). It’s not too bitter, but i think at longer steep times that may happen. It does remind me of wedding imperial but there would be room for both of this in my cupboard because i like the way this tastes without the caramel that wedding imperial has. This is a seriously lovely tea! I will for sure be looking to get more when i get back to europe…some day. thank you cteresa!

I have a cold and I am not able to smell the dry leaf unfortunately.
But my taste remains intact and this vanilla tea is really different from the ones I have had until now.

The mellowness of this tea is incredible, it’s so smooth, delicious feeling.
The Vanilla is not a sweet vanilla, it’s a lovely sharp Vanilla to me but it may come from my steeping time (4,5 min) and the tea base used by MF.
I think there is some assam probably here because I get a hint of astringency at the very end of the sip and it may be different with a shorter steep – I’ll retry next time with 2,5 or 3 min.
Anyway this astringency is a pleasant one so I can rate this high quality tea.

Thank you so much cteresa for this sample, this is lovely.

To JustJames, thank you so incredibly unbelievably much for sharing this with me. I was able to identify which tea this was right away, and that alone made it all the more special. Thank you!

In the bag, this tea smells like a conglomerate of fruit and something else unidentifiable but sweet, although I suspect I was likely smelling several other teas, as the entire sample package smells delicious, and I almost wish I could make a tea that just smells like the whole package.

I steeped this up keychange style, so I added in my requisite rock sugar and cream, and gave it about four and a half minutes, heaping tsp for about 8 oz of water.

The taste is indeed exquisite and refined, and I could tell immediately that the tea was of high quality. I didn’t have quite the revelation JustJames had while drinking this tea, and for that I am sorry, but it was delightful nonetheless. It tasted sort of reminiscent of H and S’s Parris, although the base is more pronounced, and if you let it steep too long, you almost, and I really do mean almost encounter a slightly medicinal note that actually isn’t entirely off-putting. The bergamot in this is also detectable, although I can’t quite recall if bergamot is even listed in the admittedly intriguing description.

I’m glad I have 100 more g of this tea though, because I really did enjoy it! thanks again, JustJames!

I’m at work today, avoiding working (really should get on that).
I brought with me the sample of this tea that MissB so generously sent me.
What I’ve learned so far, it that’s it a little too fussy to be drinking at work. First cup I think I oversteeped and overleafed, second steep was better but still not where I would like it. Second try, less leaf – less steep – way better this time. It’s really nice and light, fruity, delicate. I think it’s more peachy than apricot, but for sure nice real fruit flavors that are “floating around in the air” rather than hitting you over the head. I really like this and I think it will be even better at home under better steep conditions. Reserving rating til I get it right.
Thanks MissB for the sample.

So delicious. Exotic and flowery. I like it with two cubes of sugar and a splash of almondmilk.

This is my kind of Yunnan!!
Thank you Sil for the sample. Yummm.
It’s a robust one this is, reminds me of Queen Catherine from H&S. A tad smokey, some nice depth, and a bit of pepper. Normally I’m the anti-pepper girl in teas, but here it hits in a different place, towards the back of the sip, and I’m finding it rather pleasant.
Also… sipdown! woot.

hello beautiful.

if you had predicted it in advance i likely would have laughed (okay guffawed) in your specific direction but this blend jolted a DISCONCERTING (and embarrassing) movie quote from me…… MissB. were you aware of this? hmmm

in any case… as i was sifting through the beautifully packed bag of treasures B packed for me last night i was drawn away to an ethereal world of fauchon crosswinds and mariage freres chinooks. after a long day i settled down (gleefully) to choose my own adventure.

what stood out about this blend was the colours…. bright yellows and red against the tea. bright and festive, and the smell! a bolero indeed. that is when it happened— that is when words from a movie i saw ONE time under duress squeaked out: ‘you had me at hello.’ yeah. ‘jerry macguire’. it’s like finding yourself singing along with the canned elevator music. how appalling.

dry the blend smells intriguingly like grapefruit! once the water was added the spanish dancer became a chameleon. no more grapefruit, fresh peaches mixed with sweet smoke, a background of fig, but a spicy version as opposed to the straight succulent sweet.

beautifully sweet, brilliantly executed. thank you MissB. i don’t think even you could have predicted a spontaneous ‘jerry mcguire’ recitation. you know what though? i’ll wear it…. a blend like this is worthy of such a dire confession, LOL!

OH, this is amazing. For some reason I’m getting strawberries and cream, but I do taste the vanilla and walnuts mentioned in the description. This is very sweet and has a surprising amount of depth for a rooibos. I only have enough for a few more servings, but I look forward to each cup.

Thank you QueenofTarts!

I can’t wait to pick up my french teas from Sil now! :O I wouldn’t want to drink these daily because I wouldn’t want them to be common-place, but wow!

How lucky I am to have received this tea in a swap with JustJames!

This tea is downright enchanting! It is all sweet citrus and berries with creamy floral overtones. Lovely stuff. Thank you so much for sharing JustJames :)

Sipdown!! (165)

Just finished off the sample JustJames sent over. This tea will be missed but I don’t think I will be restocking. I find that though this is always tasty, the flavor changes each time I make it. You never quite know which flavor will shine through in each cup. Personally, I enjoy the combination of vanilla and mate but this one is leaning more to the mate side. Not bad, just different than the last cup I had that was perfectly balanced. Still this is one delicious blend and it will be missed. Thank you JustJames :)