Mariage Frères

Very Sweet and happily floral! I will say I really like this and this cup didn’t last long AT ALL…only minutes…

I’m picking up some Vanilla hints today…this is in addition to the nutty-sweet-bergamot type aroma. In addition to my previous findings on taste – I can taste more floral this time around. This is still yummy and a satisfying Morning Cup!

OMG! Just got a package from Doulton and I have been spoiled! Thanks so much Doulton! This is the first one I am trying from your package…I random chose.

It smells like a nutty-sweet earl grey type…very pleasant smell.

It’s a nice, rich brown color. It’s a medium strength taste. I can taste the black tea, the floralness, the sweetness of bergamot, and it’s a bit nutty. I really like this!!!!!

I wasn’t overly in love with this tea at first but then I discovered more is more, at least as far as steep time goes. Now I’m sad to have to de-cupboard this tea. At least this is one that I can get again! So one day the sweet but fresh candy-ness will be mine again!

Bumped up the steep time on this from 3min (my first time having this) to 5mins. That’s my happy spot. It’s still a subtle flavor but it no longer feels weak. There’s the sweet, vanilla/creamy Easter candy taste from last time but also a little fresh citrus, though not so much a citrus taste but a citrus freshness that is really nice because it keeps the sugary sweet Easter candy-like flavor from being too sugary sweet. Tasty stuff! I’m (once again) bumping my rating a little bit to reflect the increased happiness this gives me.

I figured something out while sipping on this tea: Mariage Freres and Kusmi have very similar tea styles. (Is this a big ole ‘duh’ to everyone but me?) Both have flavorings typically on the more subtle end and that flavor tends to hit most in the smell and then the endnote of each sip. But I think there are two main differences between them for me: Kusmi flavorings, while more subtle than a lot of flavored teas out there, do seem to be a bit stronger than most Mariage Freres teas. And the tea taste that hits towards the front of each sip (where the flavoring is tasted least) is milder and not as decadent feeling in Mariage Freres as they are in the Kusmi teas.

The smell of this tea is lovely – sweet and creamy with a little caramelized something to it. The tasting notes say crème brûlée and I’m not sure I would have gone there on my own, but yeah, I can see that, though there seems to be an additional note of candy-like sweetness in the smell that keeps me from saying “But of course it is!”. Perhaps it because I knew this tea was called “Easter”, but that sweet sugary smell/taste made me think a bit of Easter candies (in a good way). The taste is much milder with the flavors really only coming through in the end. They are quite nice but I think I would have liked it to be slightly more intense. Or for the tea taste to be richer as it felt just a hair thin and not quite as smooth as the tea taste in Troika yesterday. All in all a tasty tea but one that I want to just turn up the volume on just a hair.

ETA: For the second steep I really increased the time – 6 minutes – and added a tiny splash of half & half. Now I’m getting a nice level of flavor. It’s very sweet and Easter-candy-like with lots of vanilla. The tea flavor isn’t as silky as Kusmi seems to be but it doesn’t feel as thin as before. I’m adjusting my rating because I quite like this now. I just have to remember to go for the long steep time.

Great smell but the taste fell down on me a little. At first the taste was not there, at least compared to the smell, then I started to notice it, particularly at the end of the sip.

It’s a decent tea, no doubt. I absolutely love almost everything by Mariage Freres, but this one is a bit too overpowering in the flowery department. But it’s not undrinkable, nor bad in any way. It just doesn’t rise to my idea of perfection that I like in my cup.

I want to love this tea, but it is so hard. I love the other Mariage Freres, but this one has a twinge that isn’t so great.

I was once at a house party, and after spending the night I made boiled water in a clean saucepan, as this house had no kettle. Drinking the tea, I couldn’t help but notice it tasted distinctly noodley and salty. My friend told me that she had used that saucepan to make ramen the night before. Ick.

This tea reminds me of that day, every single time I drink it. Oh well.

LORI thoughtfully sent me three different versions of Casablanca mint to sample and compare. Mariage Frères has added bergamot which I can taste. It’s very nice. Adagio’s version tastes like a full-fledged mint single note tea and I can detect the blend in this one quite easily.

This tea is tasty and flavorful but it does not sing out to me in the unique way that other Mariage Frères blends have done. I would certainly drink this again and I might invest in the iced tea portions, but I don’t think I would get a full-fledged tin or this or even a bag.

I’ve had so many teas in the past many months—I’m approaching my 200th tasting note—and I must add that if I had sampled this only a few months ago it would have knocked my socks off. Right now, the specialness is diluted for me by the many teas I have experienced.

The front of the taste is smooth, almost tasteless roobios but on the back end of the taste I pick up the EG notes.

So, now that I’m out of this tea, does that mean I’m going to go through withdrawal?

(Ha! I’m so funny!)

Anyone know why this is called “Opium Hill” other than the whole is being grown where poppies used to grow? I mean, is it supposed to have any poppy-like notes? Because honestly, I have zero clue what a poppy note would taste like (unless something made me think of a lemon poppy seed muffin which, yeah, probably not).

Anyway, poppies or not, this is clean and sweet tasting. I’m reminded me of this really tasty TKY dark roast takgoti sent to me in a swap ages ago. (I need to figure out what that was because it was really tasty.) Anyway, I know this shouldn’t remind me of a heavily roasted TKY because this is a very green oolong. And it isn’t so much the roastiness but a similar sweet note that I can’t figure out how else to identify. All I know is that I like it. Lots.

2nd steep: 3 minutes. Wow. So sweet. I’m getting nectar and flowers and the note of sweet roasty from the first steep. Really tasty.

3rd steep: 4 minutes. A little mellower than the second steep but still sweet. Now I’m thinking of a dan cong and tropical fruits. Guava? Banana? Something. The taste flattens out a little as it cools but that just means I should drink it quickly. I’m a-okay with that.

4th steep: 6 minutes. I confess to eating a bit of pungent cheese in between steeps three and four so that could be affecting my taste buds but now I’m getting floral notes that make me think of nectar and lavender.
3.1g/6oz

This blend intrigued me, and thanks to TeaEqualsBliss, I have some to sample. I thought this might be to the liking of Golden Moon’s Vanilla Mint in that it was a mint/green/black tea blend. I like the added bergamot in this blend. The mint is the first flavor I notice, then the gunpowder, much lighter is the black tea, and then more of an aftertaste of minty bergamot. I like this tea. I hope the flavor continues to impress as it cools. I think this would be a delish iced tea. Need something to replace Tazo Zen.

This tea is MAKING my Monday morning. Thank you Doulton!

Taken with a scant half teaspoon of sugar.

I know this is supposed to be black tea and flowers, but what it tastes like to me is some lemon grapefruit St. Germain hybrid flower :) I would say there were elderflowers in here but they are not listed. I don’t taste hibiscus like it tastes in the various herbals I’ve had at all. I find it in the same vein of an Earl Grey (citrusy but without bergamot, if that makes any sense). It is absolutely delightful! Very elegant. Very special.

I made a second steep at 5 minutes, no sugar, and it’s very tasty, floral/citrus.

I NEED a tin of this :) I think it would make a great iced tea for a very special occasion too!

Note to self: when endeavoring to get through large numbers of tea in a day, perhaps it is not the wisest course of action to use the 12oz cup. And if the 12oz cup is selected, perhaps second steeps should be avoided. And perhaps caffeinated teas should be alternated with decaffeinated teas. The alternative is shaky hands, twitching and a desire to dance like a Muppet.

I typically save rooibos for nighttime but for some reason, it seemed like a good idea to try this one now. I’m still on the hunt for rooibos that I enjoy and Doulton was nice enough to send me a sample of this one to try. Which is awesome because I would have hated to have actually purchased this as I conducted my search. Because this? Is like concentrated rooibos. The smell is sweet and faintly vanilla-y and fully rooibos-y. But when I take a sip is when it really shows of the rooibos-ness. I think it is the sweetness of the vanilla that accentuates the taste of the rooibos because it pretty much beats me over the head with rooibos ickiness. Even with the aftertaste, it is still beating me while yelling, “DIE! DIE! I AM ROOIBOS, FEAR ME! DIE!”

Okay, maybe I’m being a tad bit dramatic (let’s blame all of the caffeine today, shall we?) but still, this is so freaking rooibos. It’s a floof of vanilla on top of concentrated rooibos. It is the essence of rooibos. It is the epitomy of all the things about rooibos I don’t like. Sweet, sour wood. From smell to aftertaste. For someone that doesn’t like rooibos (that’d be me), this is not fun.

The flavoring is too subtle for a rooibos in my opinion. I felt it almost tasted like a plain rooibos…which I enjoy…but not what I was going after this evening. You know I love vanilla, but it was a barely detectable flavor. When it comes to rooibos, I do prefer the knock you over the head ones rather than the subtle ones. I feel that you could save your dollars and get a nice, plain organic rooibos and have it taste very similar. Still, a nice warm late night cup.

Thanks so much to Doulton for this sample!

Ok, so I’ve been putting off rating this tea for a while. Because everyone loves it, and I initally didn’t find it particularly special. I wasn’t getting the amazing dessert overtones that everyone else got.

But, it’s been growing on me. And now, I really like it. Especially when I have it with half and half and sweetener. Fruity, smooth, and just pleasureable.

Yum.

I sipped on a cup of this while I was on the porch earlier and, I will admit, I was more concerned with the great weather than with of the taste of the tea so I’m not sure how much I really noticed. The dry leaf made me think of Peeps marshmallows… if Peeps was a gourmet dessert and not little balls of stale sugar. Creamy, sweet and with a little tang of something unidentifiable. All brewed up, the smell was a little more exotic. I could taste a bit of the hibiscus but it wasn’t overwhelming – just a faint ding of tart that brought to mind fresh berries. Of course, once the Peeps connection was made, I couldn’t get it out of my mind and I ended up thinking of gourmet raspberry Peeps. If they made gourmet raspberry Peeps. Oddly enough, I don’t think it tasted like actual raspberry or even actual Peeps but that’s what got stuck in my head. That being said, I’m not in love with this tea but I think it is more a personal taste thing than a tea thing. Because anything that reminds me of raspberry just isn’t something I’ll ever adore.

Hmm. This doesn’t make the best of iced teas: the tea flavor and the berry flavor are both there, but they never quite mesh.

Disclaimer: My tin of Marco Polo is embarrassingly old, which is surely affecting the flavors it produces.

Mariage Frères describes this tea on their web-site as: “A highly original orchestration of the essences of selected fruits. Harmonious aroma and flavour.”

Very helpful! What selected fruits are in the orchestra? They promise harmony and not cacophony. I got this tea based entirely on the name. I know that I’m a Pavlovian dog when it comes to names. If Lipton’s packaged their tea bags as “Beethoven’s Ninth Tea” or as “Van Gogh’s Struggles” or as “Jay Gatsby’s Jazz Age Party Tea” I’d probably be slurping it up.

Yes, name yourself or your tea “French Impressionism” or “Italian Opera” and you’ve got my credit card number. In this case, however, Mariage Frères did not disappoint me. I get a taste of vanilla and chocolate both along with a fruity mélange of perhaps strawberries or currents? The fruit is hard to pin down but I know it’s there. The aftertaste is not to be trusted but having had a full mug I will say this: aftertaste of banana? Or a little pineapple?

Yes, this is a symphony of fruity chocolate with some vanilla. Have you ever had a “banana baby?” They sell them in my local supermarkets: http://www.dianasbananas.com/our-products/

Anyhow, elegant tea is delicious and the aftertaste runs riot in the mouth mimicking the essence of a Diana’s Banana Baby. It seems like a very French thing to do—a bricolage of high and low art; bringing Vivaldi to the tropics; having Jerry Lewis be the lead tenor of a Bach Requiem Mass.

I’ve been tasting a lot of French flowery/fruity/chocolatey tea of late and it’s often difficult to distinguish them. What makes each one unique? Vivaldi has most certainly established itself on my palate as distinctive. As Randy Jackson might say to this tea, “You’ve made it your own”.

I missed my workout today and desperately need to go do it, but it’s been a long week and I’m not exactly perky at the moment. So I’m going to start a little adventure called a tale of three vanillas in the hopes that by the end I’ll be energized enough to work out.

This is the first in the saga, to be followed by a rerun of The Jade Teapot’s Starry Night and my sample of the Samovar Vanilla Dian Hong.

Gee, this tea smells terrific! No, really, it is a tantalizing smell coming out of the tin, a sultry vanilla smell. It’s incredible, you can actually smell the beany grain of the vanilla which gives it a slight resemblence to the smell of coffee. It’s like being inside a vanilla bean, or rather, swimming in a vat of vanilla beans like toddlers do in those ball pit things. There’s a dark roasty smell as well, which is certainly the tea, which is dark brown and luscious. You can see pieces of vanilla bean among the leaves.

The aroma during steeping is equally delicious. I think vanilla may be a hard flavoring to get exactly right and it seems as though its success is highly dependent on the quality of the vanilla used to flavor as well as the thing being flavored. My experience with the Numi Vanilla Decaf was pretty bad, and though I thought it unlikely this experience would be similar I was relieved to be right. The vanilla aroma rises gently and organically out of the cup, along with a malty, sugary tea smell that is quite enticing.

The liquor is lighter in color than I’d expected from the darkness of the leaves, a sort of burnt orangish brown.

Yum. It tastes smoother and more delicate than I expected. It’s not a shot over the bow so much as a gentle rumble. The vanilla is sweet and delicious, and it melds with the tea’s own sweetness to create something that, astonishingly, is just the right amount of sweet. The flavors lean on each other nicely. A wonderful cup.

I’m not sure exactly what the right steeping time for this one will turn out to be. It was fine at 3 minutes but a bit better at 4. I might try 5 next time, just for laughs.

And as a postscript — the empty cup smells nommy!

I’ve fallen in love with smoky teas;
Their ashy taste will always please.
The flavors are strong with no dearth
Of tar and of peat and of earth.

That’s me! I know that most people disagree with me, but smoke is my niche; my dream lover; my mystic muse. I went to France to obtain this—or really, I emailed to France. I also ordered a superb jelly and just had a most smoky afternoon snack: I felt as if I were in a Paris “une boite de nuit” with the smoke of Gitanes and Gauloises curling all about me. Let my calico cat stand in for Josephine Baker, and I’m flying “en avion de l’ame!”

Here’s the jelly, which I had with bread and un p’tit beurre:
«Tarry Souchong» tea jelly:

Created by the Mariage family in the 19th century, these collection of tea jellies, manufactured in the traditional way in copper pans, are a wonderful accompaniment to toast, brioches and scones. The fruit of this ancestral knowledge, this tea jelly, flavoured with a smoky Formosa tea, combines its subtlety with the splendour of the best teas."

I am utterly enthralled! The smoky teas that I adore are typically far less costly than the delicate whites and the carefully cultivated greens, so I am in luck. This is my moment of Tea Nirvana, of ecstasy that fills my being with a thousand pulses of pleasure.