Nina's Paris

Well, this the third and last sample I requested from Nina’s Paris. I saved it for last because I liked the idea of an orange chocolate tea, which I’ve never drunk before. But because no set instructions were given (for any of their teas, for that matter), I think brewed this tea incorrectly, unfortunately.

Anyway, the dry leaves – which look pretty due to the presence of several pieces of orange rind – smelled of yummy orange cream. Wet, they smelled of the base tea, which is a strong black tea. I knew then the flavor would be strong as well. The aroma of the tea itself smelled like that of the orange chocolate in the shape of orange (the one that you bang on the table and the slices come apart – man, I miss those!).

The liquor is clear and reddish brown. As for the flavor, the base tea is very strong – too strong. It overpowers the orange and chocolate, which don’t appear until the aftertaste. And even then they are kind of weak. I guess this tea isn’t for me.

But much thanks to Nina’s Paris for their willing to send out samples!

My last sample from Nina’s :) It smells sweet and cinnamony. The apple flavor isn’t as strong as the Marie Antoinette tea – I like the addition of cinnamon but wish the apple was more prominent. It seems like a mellow tea, nice to sip while watching TV :D

First, if you have not steeped your Nina’s Teas yet – don’t use your American oversized mug. The samples seem much more suited to dainty 6oz cups than our usual 12-16oz beasties. I wish I had realized why these were coming out so light before hand. Live and learn.

This one is a lovely relaxing cup that is a mild twist on standard jasmine tea. The leaf is very finely cut and very dark for green tea. There is some flower petals in the mix. The jasmine is the good stuff. What I mean is it is not the gross bitter stuff passed off as jasmine in cheap or bagged teas. The lotus is a very light floral note in the late sip and reminded me of the flavor of Tazo Lotus. That happens to be one of the few I like by Tazo. The base is a bit harder to separate out. Definitely not grassy or bitter.

Thank you Nina’s Tea for the sample.

Sipdown, 241. Thanks to Nina’s Paris for this sample! Rose is of course one of my favorites, so Versailles Rose was an immediate selection. Plus grapefruit sounded like an interesting combo!

Well it seems like you can count Nina’s among the Parisian teas that I really enjoy. First off, delicious black base. Malty, nutty, with a hint of honey. Based on reading reviews of their other teas, it seems like this one has a much subtler flavoring. The grapefruit is light, just adding a slight citrusy note to the tea, and the rose is also very subtle, coming across as lightly herby-floral. I probably could have used more of those flavors here, but the base tea is quite delicious so it doesn’t matter as much to me. Looking forward to trying my other samples!

The description is spot on with this one – soft and fruity. The wet leaf looks more like green tea than a black. This has no bitterness or sharp bite. There is only a light drying compared to the bagged versions I’ve tried. The aftertaste is pleasant, cooling, and lasting. I don’t know enough about Darjeeling to comment a lot on the taste. I can say I enjoyed this quite a bit and it went great with sausage gravy.

Sinfully good! The smell when dry was tart so I was a little worried, but there was no reason to be the vanilla balanced it out well. Creamy, fruity, goodness! As it cooled it was like biting into a freshly pealed apple skin, makes me wonder how this would taste iced?

I expected to love this tea. It’s ok but not great. It lacks the orange flavor I expected. I could smell it when I opened the baggie so I thought the orange would be the prominent taste. Its just not there. Once steeped I couldn’t even smell orange just a spicy sweetness. Now as a spiced black it was good, had a nice flavor and I enjoyed it. But I rated it on being a orange tea and this just wasn’t orange.

This is the perfect balance of flavor. I can taste it all! Sometimes with a flavored tea there’s so much going on that one flavor over shadows the other, not with this tea! I used just a little sugar and this taste like raspberry pie ala-mode from the amish country. They put a layer of caramel on the bottom of the crust then the berry filling and whipped cream on top. Yes! Raspberry pie with a cup of black tea is exactly how this taste. Yummy!!

Tasty tea! It reminds me of the flavoring used for DT’s Chocolate Orange only this is used subtly so that the tea base can work with the bright citrus and creamy decadent chocolate. :) I would say the chocolate doesn’t taste all that authentic, but it is not unbearably fake. I am a bit of a chocolate snob so it might just be me. :)

Steep tea has a bit or orange rind flavor (nice and authentic here) and still a bit or creamy chocolate, but mostly it just tastes like tea. And not a bad black tea base either. :) Worth a second steep.

Thank you for the sample!

Enjoyed this last night while watching Love Actually. Thought they complemented each other well.

This reminded me so much of Della Terra’s Eight Candles. Caramel is much of what I smell and taste in the cup. The vanilla and caramel together make it taste like a toasted marshmallow. So creamy and delicious. Another tea to add to my shopping list. I may need to take another part time job to pay for my tea addiction :) 2 for 2 with Nina’s Paris!

Thank you for the sample, Sophie & Laurent :)

My first Nina’s Tea sample and I had a hard time deciding which to try first, but I saw Josie Jade’s review and orange creamsicle sounded way too good to wait. The dry leaf smell smelled like those chocolate orange candies that come out around Christmas. At first I thought I steeped too long because the tea just reminded me of earl grey… a little bitter and just orange. As it cooled, I started to get the cream and I liked it more… maybe a hint of chocolate? I don’t think my taste buds are sensitive enough lol.

I re-steeped it and added rock sugar, let it cool a bit and voila! There we go, orange creamsicle. I can see myself drinking a lot of this…

My second sample from Sophie and Laurent :). This is my favorite so far. The dry leaf smelled like roses. When I steeped it and sipped it to see if it was strong enough I could immediately tell it was apples. As it cooled, I got a whole lot more of the rose so by the end of the cup it was pretty equal tasting. I think it would have been a good tea for Valentine’s Day actually, a romantic, sweet tea with roses :) One of my favorite teas was an apple black tea that was discontinued so I really like this one…

I’ve had this tea for years and had lost interest in it long ago. It smells fantastic and delivers a strongly flavored cup, but I had other teas I favored. Not sure why I picked it today, but I was looking for an option for an iced late tea and this was a good one to have picked! The rose is bright and has such an accurate rose petal flavor. It isn’t just the scent of the rose, but the hint of a bite that you experience when eating fresh rose petals. The apple is crisp, blending harmoniously with the rose and the whole thing tastes really good as a latte. This tea has caught my attention again!

I love that some of Nina’s teas are available on Amazon! What that means is that I can put it on my wish list and people who are wanting to get me a gift can look and see what I’d like. THEN the tea magically arrives in my mailbox just like it did yesterday! Yay me! This tea is just as good as the sample I so enjoyed and I’m on my third steeping with remarkable flavor.

Dry, this tea smells fruity, but I can’t put my finger on which fruit. While steeping, there is a green fruity rose scent rising from my cup. The first few sips had a bitter twinge which made me question if the three minutes I had steeped it for was too long, but that turned into a short burst of tartness. I just re-read the tea description – apples! Apples and roses, that makes the tartness make sense! It’s like you are biting into an apple and you get that bit of tartness of the skin before the sweet flavor hits you! Adding a little sugar brings out the sweetness of the apples and mellows out that tart burst. The rose seems to mix in the middle of the sip and remains on the end after the apple fades out, although the taste lingering after each sip is pretty balanced between the two. My mouth feels a little dry after, the same feeling I get when I eat rose petals. I’m impressed how this tea is able to taste so much like ripe apples, yet not taste like apple juice. It is as if I just bit into the most juicy floral apple ever. Towards the end of my cup, when the tea has cooled, I’m getting more rose in the beginning of each sip. I steeped a second time for four minutes and put a teaspoon of sugar in this time. The flavor was really amped up! Third steeping at five minutes is a little weaker, but still has a surprising amount of flavor. Fourth steeping at six minutes still has a decent amount of flavor and a bit of that apple tartness! This tea just keeps going!

The leaves are dark brown and uniformly cut, and contain pieces of apple and rose. While I waited for the tea to cool down, I took delight in the aroma – apple and cinnamon, with hint of vanilla – which smelled like apple pie with a generous amount of cinnamon. Since the liquor is dark, yet clear, I expected the base tea (black) to quite strong. Instead, I tasted a wonderful balance between the base and the other ingredients. Again, apple pie, but with a slight presence of brisk black tea. The flavor is medium-bodied and smooth.

This tea is delicious! I’m very glad I chose it as one of my samples. Recommended to be drunk with dessert (for the apple cinnamon) or with breakfast (for the base).

Full review on the 18th on http://sororiteasisters.com/ but here are the snippits:

The initial sip evokes the cherry flavors in such a pleasant way. Nothing like a medicinal cheery or artificial cherry flavor. As a matter of fact the flavors in this tea are delicious and quite natural with no residual “oily” look or texture floating on top of the cup. In fact the tea is so clear that I am highly pleased as I anticipated some type of oils from all the varied flavorings.

It is wonderful how lovely the flavors meld, I can distinctly pick up all flavors of peach, strawberry, and cherry, and they blend in harmony.

This is my favorite sample from Nina’s. I can taste the rooibos, slightly woody. The apricot flavor comes through strong but not too strong, hints of peach and it is very creamy. The tea is fine on its own but I added just a few drops of cream, no sugar needed. This is a good dessert tea for the evening, and because there is no caffeine I do not have to worry about it keeping me up all night.

This tea smells amazing in the cup. Refreshing mint with green tea. The two come together well, and make a pretty good cup of tea. It tastes a little more basic than I would have expected. I can see a bit of lemon peel mixed in with the tea but it doesn’t come out til the end, and even then it’s just a hint. The green tea tastes delicious, high quality with a lightly grassy taste. The more I drink this one the more I like it – the mint, lemon, and green tea blend together seamlessly and make a cup of tea that’s even better as it cools. I’m tempted to try this one iced as well.

Thanks go to Nina’s Paris Teas for sending me a sample of this delicious tea!

Fruity, incredibly fruity. Maybe too fruity if that is possible. Since I opened the sample all I can smell or taste is raspberry and red currant. I am starting to panic for fear I will never taste anything else ever again.

I let the tea cool to room temperature while I ran some errands. The fruityness is not so overwhelming now. I think this might make a good iced tea. I do not taste any caramel or vanilla though.

Hmmm. . . I’m the first one to rate another of Nina’s teas. This one smells overwhelmingly sweet when you open the packet, obviously from the passionfruit. I noticed that the black tea in this one is much like in the Hepburn blend – it’s very strong and a little bitter, in a good way. I think that in a lot of flavored teas the flavoring completely overshadows the tea base, so that you get very little actual tea flavor. It seems like Nina’s has figured out the perfect balance when adding flavoring to a tea. I love that I can still taste the black tea but that there’s a really sweet fruit flavor on top of that. The aftertaste of this tea is overwhelmingly of passionfruit, so if you enjoy that flavor this would probably be the perfect tea for you!

-Dry blend has small black tea leaves and blue and yellow flower petals.
-Dry leaves smell sweetly of passionfruit. Tea liquor aroma is of strong black tea and sweet fruit.
-Tea liquor is a clear medium brown color.
-Slightly bitter black tea flavor with a light fruity finish. Strong passionfruit aftertaste.
-Best with milk and sweetener.
-Very good tea. Overwhelming passionfruit flavor.

Thanks Laurent for this sample!
Yummm this is delicious. I’m not usually a big black tea fan, but the combination of green really compliments this. I was scared it might become astringent, like some green/black blends that I have tried, but it isn’t at all and the strawberry and vanilla work perfectly together (especially when paired with the red velvet cheesecake cupcake I’m having right now…). I can’t wait to try the other samples.

My first Nina’s Paris tea! When I opened the packet and took a whiff the dry leaves (broken with several bits of strawberry), I smelled a strong aroma of strawberry-flavored hard candy, with a hint of vanilla. The liquor of the tea is clear and dark brown. I was surprised by the strength of the flavor when I took my first sip. It is bold. I was expecting a black tea from India, but perhaps it came from Africa (DISCLAIMER: I have little experience in tasting teas from either country (that is, unflavored teas), but I have tried some black tea from Kenya, and this tea tasted very much like it). The tea somewhat overpowers the strawberry, but the strawberry’s presence is stronger during the aftertaste. It is a bit creamy, most likely due to the presence of the vanilla. Thankfully, it’s the strawberry that makes this tea bearable, since I’m not too partial to bitter black teas.

Since this tea is very strong, I would drink it in the morning or the late afternoon after coming home from a long day.

I was a little worried about this one when I smelled it dry. It smells like it is going to be WAY too fruity, and almost has a fakey fruit smell. But once I steeped it I felt totally different. The red fruit flavors are very natural and not overpowering. This is not a “punch you in the face” with fruit flavor type of tea. I like it when you can actually taste the tea under the added flavors! It tastes like red fruit AND black tea and I think accomplished exactly what they were trying to do with the flavor.