Mariage Frères

My order from Mariage Freres arrived today. This one smelt the best so i decided to try it first. Its a really nice vanilla tea. It has a really good strong vanilla taste. This is probably the best vanilla flavoured black tea ive had. I found a lot of others to be a a bit weak on the vanilla side. but not this one. very very vanillary. tasty.

This tea is not bad. The mint and bergamot flavours are well-balanced, but I was expecting something more exciting and brilliant as this is after all, from Mariage Freres! If you just want a good after-dinner mint tea, go for it; but if you want to have the real Mariage Freres experience, Marco Polo or Opera will be the choice.

Mariage Frères are masters at creating teas that smell heavenly, to which this tea attests. It’s phenomenal! Berries and fresh, green sencha. Lovely!

165/1.5 min – Still, the aroma is strong and enticing. From the first sip, the berries are forefront in the flavor. This is followed by the fresh, grassy green of a buttery sencha. The finish, however, is all vanilla which lingers for a while. (Disclaimer: I do not generally enjoy vanilla.) So, it starts out wonderfully and finishes so-so. Still a great tea and probably outstanding for those who enjoy vanilla in their tea.

I think it’s been a LONG time since I had this tea so I made a big teapot full. I’ve had this tea since May 2011 and it still tastes the same, that makes me happy!

I’m trying to study but I had to call my mom for a weekly chat and to remind her to send me half of the 12 days of Christmas from 52teas because it arrived the day after I left after Thanksgiving. And she of course deflated my entire mood for the day with some nonsense about how she won’t cosign for the last loan I’ll need for next fall as she doesn’t want to be on the line for it when I can’t find a job. Really nice coming from your own mom right? She seems to forget I’m not my brother’s idiot friends who have degrees that are serving them no purpose, like sports marketing. So irritated it just was so INCREDIBLY RUDE of her when she will never, ever have to pay them because that’s my responsibility and she apparently has no confidence in me? Not cool.

Okay. To the tea now that I’ve finally gotten that out.

I still love this tea very much because it’s kind of malty but still tastes like vanilla icing in tea form. I’ve still got a bit in my pot and it still tastes good even cooled off. Definitely not one I’d regularly drink cold but I think it actually gets kind of a creamy taste and even consistency this way.

I’m going to be sad when I run out of this tea, which is soon.

I was curious as to how this would taste with milk and sugar added.

Answer: straight up like frosting with a black tea aftertaste.

I like it better without the additions, but I thought it would be worth a try.

I love this tea’s smoky, earthy scent. You think there’s no way it’s vanilla with a smell like that.
It’s still not there immediately but it is the best vanilla taste I’ve ever had in a tea. It actually tastes like real vanilla. It’s not too strong, and just leaves the perfect sweet aftertaste.

It is a very smooth, mild tea. It’s not something I would probably drink regularly, but I needed something for making it to Mariage Freres. This was not a bad choice at all.

This is my go-to black tea. I find it to be delicate in flavor, but rich enough to be very satisfying. It is particularly light on tannin, which makes it very easy to drink cup after cup!

Trying this one again today since it’s been a long time since I’ve had it and I just tried a similar Thé des Moines by Le Palais des Thés. I think the main difference here is the addition of rose petals to this one, which I am certain that the LPdT blend does not have. I steeped this one the same way as the LPdT blend, which happens to be the recommended time and temp for this tea as well even though it’s a little hotter than I would normally brew a black/green blend.

Oh vanilla and jasmine, you are so not a combo that is good to me, and it’s not getting any better. It just smells… weird and unpleasant to me. I can’t place it. However! The flavor on this one is pretty nice, at least when it’s hot. It surprised me! There is a hint of sweetness, even, and the vanilla and jasmine tend to spend their time apart more, though there is some of that weirdness I dislike. But then, it’s cooling, and… bleh. Very similar to the LPdT blend. Better because it still seems smoother, but very very similar, and thus not my style.

I just finished putting all my french teas into brand new tea tins, so I grabbed this one to have this morning while it was out. I really do love the combination of aromas in this tea with the citrus/bergamot, strong vanilla and floral jasmine. However, I have found that the combination of vanilla and jasmine, which sounds awesome, just tastes a bit odd to me. It’s not so odd here as in Golden Moon’s vanilla jasmine tea, possibly because it’s tempered by the bergamot and orange.

Also I can’t seem to make this tea not bitter, which again makes me wonder if it’s Mariage Freres’ black tea base that I just can’t deal with. This is a black/green blend, which are usually tricky anyway, but I brewed it basically like a green this time and it’s still slightly bitter to me. Then sometimes I think it’s just that vanilla jasmine combo that is giving it an off, bitterish flavor. Whatever it is, I’m not sure that these type of blends are really for me, even though I do love the idea of them.

I decided to try this one back to back with the Polish Monk’s blend since they seem to be very similar in ingredients. They really are very similar, but this one seems a little sweeter somehow, and the jasmine is stronger. It’s an herby jasmine, which I know seems weird, but I guess it’s a bit like herbaceous rose. I think the bergamot is somehow tempering the floralness of the jasmine, when I feel like usually the jasmine is enhancing the floral character of the bergamot. The vanilla smooths things well, but it still has that hint of bitterness that surprises me. This may be a blend that I want to work better than it does, but I won’t give up on it until it I mess around with a lot of other steep times and temps.

Lunchtime cold brew of the day. This tea is extremely vanilla-y when cold brewed. It’s kind of mind blowing! The other flavors are much more muted; there’s a general hint of floral flavor, and a slight bitterness from the bergamot, which is contributing to a slight Earl Grey creaminess of the cup. I think I enjoyed this one better as a hot brew, but I certainly wouldn’t turn away a cold brew. I think many of these French teas lose some of their complexity when cold brewed; it really takes the heat to bring out all the intricate flavors.

Here it is, my final French tea. Even though I wish I could have brought home 10x more than I did, I’ve been very (very!) satisfied with my choices. This tea sounded awesome to me: jasmine, rose, bergamot and vanilla? Yum. I’m not sure how all that has anything to do with Tibet, but I’ll take it anyway.

I have to say, the dry leaf on this tea smells amazing. The citrusy bergamot and creamy vanilla are the primary notes and give it the hint of an Earl Grey cream, but the floral jasmine adds it’s note to that and I think detect a sweetness of the rose. It smells at once floral and citrusy and creamy. The dry leaf is all tea (no additions that I can see), with some rather large non-black tea looking leaves in it. Mariage Freres’ website says this is just a black tea (in both French and English!), but after steeping: no way. There are definitely green tea leaves in my steeping basket mixed in with the black. Which means I would have steeped it below boiling had I known that, but oh well.

The liquor is a medium reddish amber and it’s become more floral in aroma, though there’s no hiding that creamy vanilla note. The taste has a floral beginning (rose, some jasmine, general “florals”), and I think the bergamot comes out in the later part of the sip, but to be perfectly honest I’m having a tough time accurately parsing it from all the other flavors. The tea is ever so slightly bitter, maybe from the bergamot, maybe from a too-hot steep temp for the (unexpected) green tea. Underlying everything is a wonderful creamy vanilla flavor that just smooths all the flavors out and ties them together. As it cools I the bergamot asserts itself some more and it reminds me again of an Earl Grey creme, but while the floral notes aren’t incredibly distinct in their own right at this point, they definitely add to the overall flavor. In fact, now they seem to have shifted more to the tail end/aftertaste of the sip.

I really want to try this one at a cooler steeping temp to see how it turns out now that I know that it’s got green in it! Still very tasty even so.

Happy 200th tasting note to me! This was my overnight cold steep, and let me tell you, it was delicious. I decided to cold steep this one after my cold steep of Marco Polo eliminated the weird tart/acidic flavor I had gotten on both of these teas. It worked again, and this came out incredibly almondy with a bit of extra nut flavors added to it. The only drink I’ve had that is that almondy is an almond flavored bubble tea, which I love.

It seems like for this tea and Marco Polo I need to add cream/sugar or cold steep to take care of that odd acidic note I taste. I’ll no doubt try this one again hot and plain just to be sure, but if nothing else I can definitely always cold steep it.

When I made a list of teas to buy at Mariage Freres, I initially thought that I should go for all of the myriad of teas that I want to try, and the standards like Marco Polo. But then I decided that actually I should only buy teas I couldn’t get in the states… and you can order quite a few Mariage Freres teas online from shops in the states, it turns out! But this was one that isn’t available here but that I had to have. On Mariage Freres’ English site, this tea is merely described as a blend of “three nut flavors.” But google translate tells me that on the French site they identify the nuts as almond, walnut and pecan. I initially thought that hazelnut would be one for sure, but no. The dry leaf smells wonderfully nutty, with a strong dose of marzipanny almond. I haven’t had a lot of experience with walnut and pecan flavors (since the concentrated flavors can be a bit different from just eating one of those nuts), but I can tell there are other nut flavors that aren’t almond in with the mix. The dry leaf is speckled with bits of nuts.

Brewed, the aroma of the black tea base comes out much more. I’m also getting a kind of earthy, nut-meat scent, with a lighter almond and again some other interesting aromas that I can’t quite place.

The flavor on this one starts out very subdued, then blooms in my mouth throughout the sip. I definitely get that sweet marzipanny almond flavor, but I’m also getting an odd, bright, almost metallic flavor. On some sips it is almost lemony citrus. I suppose a more accurate way of putting it is slightly acidic, which is surprising because I think of nuts as been smooth and rich. As the tea cools a bit the acidic flavor takes over more of the sip… it’s just really unexpected. It’s almost like I added lemon to the tea (but I didn’t). I am at once wanting to try a longer steep time to see what it tastes like a bit stronger, and also thinking that it would probably be pretty refreshing as an iced tea.

This is the first of my French teas that hasn’t quite lived up to my expectations, but I’m not ready to give up on it yet… fortunately I have plenty to fiddle with. I also may have to realize that while I love some nut flavors (almond, hazelnut, pistachio), this may not extend to all nuts. I think I like pecan flavoring, so perhaps it’s the walnut that’s the issue.

ETA: I’m deleting my previous rating of this because I can’t actually sure that it’s not my water that’s tasting funny! When I had some water at lunch (the same water I make my tea with), it also tasted oddly acidic. Or maybe it’s just my tastebuds today. Either way, I’m rescinding my judgment on this one just yet.

Sipdown, 118. This one turned out to be a good one to finish up via cold brew. This brew in particular came out really well. The flavors are nicely balanced and the result is overall slightly sweet in the aftertaste. The last MF tea in my stash!

A while ago I cold steeped this but then declared that I preferred it hot to cold, so I never tried to cold brew it again. Howeer, I was curious so I decided to go for it, and as it turns out, it is quite good cold. Perhaps it was just a better batch this time. And the cold brew has officially brought this one down into the sipdownable category, so yay.

The first time I had this I tried it with boiling water, but I just noticed that the instructions say 95°C. Also this does look kind of like a black/green blend post steeping. I didn’t have any adverse effects last time from the boiling water, but I dropped it this time anyway.

I really like the orange/jasmine combo in this one. I think jasmine pairs really well with all kinds of fruit flavors, but in particular citrus flavors. I also like that the orange isn’t super strong here; I feel like a lot of orange teas are maybe too much orange for me; it’s lightly orangey without tasting like someone dropped a ton of orange flavoring on it. This tea is a tiny bit astringent, which I wonder if it isn’t the black tea base that MF uses that I tend to find a bit off. This is one of the few teas I actually like better when it’s still hot because that astringency hasn’t come out yet. Still, I do enjoy this tea a lot.

I did it again—I put this tea in to cold steep “overnight” last Friday, and then didn’t return to work until Monday to drink it. Last time it was already many-times steeped leaves, so I wasn’t too concerned, but this was full strength. Well, I needn’t have worried… cold steeping really does seem to be fool-proof.

The cold brewed tea turned out a lovely amber color, with an orangey aroma. I like the hot steep better on it, because it brings out so much more of the jasmine than the cold steep. It’s still present, but the tea lacks some of the overall floral “blossom” quality I noted before. Still, it made a nice cold brew tea.

I was going to have another one of my almondy teas, but I decided that I wanted perhaps a floral or fruity tea, and perhaps a simpler one. Enter Oriental, which is a tea I almost didn’t mean buy. I mean, it was on my list of teas that I wanted, but when I went in to Mariage Freres and found out that I could get only do 100g minimum, and I already had so much tea that I had bought in London and at Dammann Freres, I had decided to get Thé au Tibet instead of this one, not both of them. But in the shop there were a lot of people, and a lot of teas, and I was slightly flustered and ended up asking for them both. C’est la vie, but it fortunately turned out to be a happy accident.

I’ve been intrigued by Jasmine black teas, but haven’t gotten around to trying one until now. Even so, this one isn’t really just a Jasmine black, because it’s got the mandarin orange as well. The dried leaf, which has pink flower petals of unknown affinity, smells very very orangey.

The minute the hot water hit the leaves, they released a wonderful jasmine aroma, and sniffing the tea closely yields notes of faint orange and a slightly malty black tea background. The taste is very much a harmony of jasmine and orange, with citrusy orange notes at the front of the sip blending into a floral (but not quite honeysuckle-sweet) jasmine in the body. The black tea seems to provide a solid, but subdued, background. The tea is just described as having “orange” flavor, seeming to mean the fruit itself, but it very much reminds me of an amazing orange-blossom macaron I had in Paris (which I thought almost had jasmine notes itself). This tea definitely errs on the floral side of things, which is all good to me. A happy accident indeed!

One of the best green tea’s I’ve ever had!

Very refined tea, I like to drink it in the morning.