Mariage Frères

With eggnog.

Still amazing.

I finished another tin of this today, and have transferred the one Dexter gave me into my cupboard.

YAY!

Favourite chai. So good. Yum yum yum.

OMG. So perfect with my rhubarb jam pie dough bites. :) (Just pie dough and jam rolled up and baked! So good.)

This chai is THE BEST. I’m almost out of this tin, and then I get to start on the tin Dexter so kindly sent me! If it stays cool for a few days, I’m pretty sure I’ll use up a lot of this.

It’s tempting to make an iced chai concentrate, but this tea is so expensive that seems kinda wasteful. Hmm.

Yay! Dexter sent me part of a tin because this is my most favourite chai ever but she didn’t love it as much. So I don’t have to be so careful with what I have left! Thank you so much Dex! :D

Good tea is SO GOOD yum. With a splosh of cream, as usual.

So I’m sipping this, I ate some of the matcha white chocolate cookies I made (I know…) and had some hardboiled eggs. I want to EAT ALL THE THINGS because I don’t think I ate quite enough while I was out yesterday. But then I was abruptly not hungry. I mean, I put the cookies away! O.O What?

The nice thing is that I’m not extremely sore. Some soreness, but I can walk without much of a problem today – just one foot is giving me some trouble, but I was expecting that TBH. My tarsals (aka cuneiform, why are there two names for these bones seriously people) are slightly overlapped and the arch collapses/ankle turns in on one foot. I’m working on it, but it takes time to restrengthen the right muscles.

I’m home from a whirlwind trip to my parents, where I ate ALL the foods and tried to drink all the cider. It was lovely. I also drank many many cups of my mom’s selection of pretty basic black teas. They are delicious and high quality, but I do like to mix up things with flavoured teas.

I’m easing myself back in with a chai. :) Delicious, with some soy nog. Oh, I also have bacon, sweet potato, and eggs. Yum yum yum. Recovery breakfast FTW.

Still my favourite chai.

So so good. Spicy, warming, delicious with some milk.

I need to get me some more of this. I’m going through this tin rather quickly…

Yay! Inaugural run of my new tea pot with this tea. So yummy.

The tea pot holds 2 16-oz mugs plus a bit extra, which is PERFECT. Just what I was looking for.

So today I have lost my voice. It’s pretty funny. And also annoying.

To make up for this, I have made chai with RUM. Yes. All I did was add 1 splash of rum (all that was left in the bottle) to the steeped chai, and then I added some milk.

So good.

Highly recommended. Especially at 11:00 in the morning when you’re sick. :)

Mmm.

Still my favourite.

Ohhhh, tea of teas. You are the bestest “traditional” chai I’ve ever had. It tastes so similar to the chai I used to get at this tiny vegetarian Indian restaurant that sadly closed a few years ago. Every pay weekend I used to go in and order two dishes, one to eat there and one to go. :) They had this incredible eggplant and chickpea curry that I still miss.

Today I had you while making pyrahi (Cranberry ones and peach ones! Although the dough was too stiff so I [GASP!] had to make them in muffin tins so they wouldn’t loose all the juicy fruity goodness. Gramma would be displeased.) and you were delicious.

Yep, still my most favourite chai ever. OM NOM NOM.

Today I’m actually having it with sugar. I picked up some organic less processed weird textured cane sugar to have with my teas, because it’s not quite brown but then it’s not white sugar either. I know, sugar’s sugar. But it makes me happy to try different things. :)

Anyways, the tea. So much spices. So delicious. Today I have a bit more clove than usual, and with the sugar and cream it’s such a comforting drink. Reminds me of the chai they served at my favourite, now defunct, Indian restaurant.

I think “Mmm…” is all I really need to say about this tea.

So good. So, so good. I could smell the delightful spices, even though all I could taste was the tiny bit of astringency from the black tea.

Yeah. I can sniff things and smell them sort of, but I can’t taste. All I want to do is enjoy my tea!

Oh, also! I have appointment at the walk-in clinic! Isn’t that nice? And I went washing machine shopping with a friend and came home with a rose plant. Not quite sure how that happened, but maybe the thorns will teach the kitten to not eat my plants…

Nom.

Om nom nom.

So good. With a little maple syrup it’s like candy. Ginger-spice candy.

I just realized! It’s my Steepster-versary! 773 tasting notes, 366 teas tried, >200 teas in my cupboard. :D

This means a CELEBRATION, which is consisting of my favourite chai (that I would never have bought if not for the enablers on here) in a travel mug, as I go out in the snow and try to get to work! No, it’s not much snow, but we’re ill-equipped to deal with it. I do have to check on work stuff, though. Just for an hour or two, and then I will start texting MissB to pester her into meeting up! :D

Hopefully the samples I’ve packaged up for her are indeed teas she hasn’t tried. :D

Nom. Om nom nom.

This is exactly what I wanted this morning. And I think it might be my favourite chai, so I might have to get another container of it. eep!

Today the ginger, cardamom and pepper came through strongly. Delicious with some cream and a little honey.

It did well with a 4 minute steep as well. I might even try 5 minutes next time!

I think one of the reasons I like this chai so much is that there isn’t a sickly sweet cinnamon flavour. Cinnamon is sweet, yes, but I don’t want my tea to taste like Mike & Ike’s Hot Tamales.

I think I may have lost it today. First I got this tea – $24 for 100g. Then I got the new DavidsTea Nordic mug with trees. Then I went to Bayswater and got 100g of each tea rather than the 50g I actually needed. Then I got a sample at Steam Tea House (as well as some tea for a friend).

Oops?

Anyway, I really like this one. Really REALLY like it. This is the masala chai I’ve been looking for. Totally worth it. And I love my mug, too, even though I would rather have multicoloured mountains on a Nordic mug. This is a lovely 2nd choice. :)

(6g tea, 16oz water, a couple spoonfuls of maple whipped cream.)

This came to me courtesy of wheezybee who sent it to me in a swap over the summer. I’ve been enjoying the last few teas she sent me over the past few weeks, I had set them aside for autumn because they were better suited for the weather.

This is my first tea from Mariage Frères, but it certainly won’t be the last. I’m spending the first two weeks of June in France and plan on saving up to go nuts buying tea while I’m there. As soon as Black Friday is over I’m going to buckle down on my spending and it all goes in the Buying Tea in France fund.

Anyway, on to the tea….

This tea smells amazing while it is steeping, my whole house smells like cinnamon now.

About five minutes after I sat down to drink this one of my blog posts made it to the front page of Reddit and my tea got cold while I was trying to manage the social media firestorm. I only managed a few sips while it was hot, but I really loved the creamy texture of the tea and the delicate balance of the cinnamon and black base. This is still pretty good at room temperature, but not exactly how I wanted to drink it.

Hmm what shall I say about this tea ?
First of all, it smells heavenly. The fruity side of it keeps you smelling again and again and AGAIN, then end up with vanilla and honey that give sweetness and mellow to this treasure.
The tea leaves looks amazing, well Mariage Frères is known for its Haute quality of tea… And the added cornflowers brings a fresh color to this wonderful preparation.

Once brewed, we still smell that heavenly scent but it’s less aggressive… The liquor is definition of bliss, smooth, sweet fresh and luxurious I couldn’t ask for more.
About the temperature of the water, I noticed that once we exceeded 70°C it kind of burn the leaves which at the end of the cup brings an occasional bitterness …
Enjoyed with hot scones, milk jam and champagne.

Sipdown, 128. My last assam from Sil! So I discovered with a lot of these that I am not the biggest fan of assams. However! When the hot water hit this one I thought it smelled quite good! I still added milk and sugar because I am a weakling when it comes to assams.

I am enjoying this one more than the other assams I have had recently. It’s smooth, it’s rich, and it doesn’t have that roughness I have found in other assams. Glad I got to try this one out!

Thank you Scheherazade for this sample.

This tea is strong with malty and smoky tones. Thick and velvety with sweetness and a touch of astringency. A drop of milk smooths it out nicely and brings out more strength whilst lowering the astringency. As it cools the smoke becomes stronger but the sweetness continues into the after taste.

A nice breakfast tea, my husband was also a fan of this one.

Sipdown (yay!)

I could pick out the sencha more clearly this time, though I didn’t change any of the brewing parameters. This is just a really nice, really smooth, jammy green tea. Yum.

They may say subtle, but when I opened the sample packet Shmiracles sent me, I was thinking the berry was anything but! I don’t say that in a bad way, though. It’s sweet and jammy smelling and reminds me a lot of homemade raspberry jam!

The better news is that the Sencha offers a butteriness and herbaceousness that keeps this from being candy-like or overdone, and the berry was balanced very well with the tea itself so I could taste both each sip.

Thanks Shmiracles!

http://instagram.com/p/gTyeVAinFP/