THEODOR

I’m bumping the rating on this one up with 3 points. Lately this has been my breakfast/morning tea of choice. Really love this one. It’s becoming a staple…

I bought this tea because the ingredients and the smell reminded me of The au Tibet, of which Cteresa so kindly sent me a sample and which I really liked.

These teas are similar in some respects but certainly not the same.

Starting with the basis: both teas contain vanilla, bergamot and jasmine. The HT adds marigold and uses a base of black and green tea. The TT adds mandarin orange and rose and uses a base of black tea.

Although the vanilla and jasmine are very recognizable in both teas, they vere into entirely different directions taste wise.

In the HT the vanilla is really in the forefront, both scent and tastewise. De jasmine prevents the brew becoming too sweet. The bergamot and marigold aren’t really recognizable, at least not to me (actually I don’t even know what marigold smells and tastes like). The tea is warm, sweet and comforting in character. The floral notes remain in the background.

In the TT on the other hand the floral notes – and especially the rose – are at the forefront. Together with the black tea base this makes for an edgier tea with a slight smokey feeling. The vanilla is cetainly present but seems to be in a supporting role rather than a leading one. As the tea cools the vanilla becomes more noticeable btw.

It’s really great to see how two teas with for a great part the same ingredients can be so different in character. They actually aren’t comparable at all :-)

I like both teas. For the TT that’s something, as I actually don’t like rose in my tea and usually try to avoid rose scented teas. The HT is more of a ‘happy feeling’ tea as the TT is more elegant and sophisticated. Being a sweet tooth I’d probably choose the HT over the TT most times, but I can imagine that being different for others.

Prep details: HT 80 C/ 4:30 min & TT 95 C/ 4:30 min

Rating is for HT only. I’ll post this review under TT too and give it’s rating there.

Thank you Cteresa for this sample. It sure is a win.
This is a very mellow rooibos, a bit sweet and so easy to drink that the pot shows up empty before I could even realize it.
The almond flavor is really surprising, as if only the most tender center part of it had been used after being peeled and scrubbed. I really wonder whether there’s not some vanilla in there to make the brew feel so creamy.
Strawberries and rapsberries, I think so, but it’s an undertone to the sweet almond.
I also brewed a cup of rooibos des vahines, almond-vanilla, to compare it to Carpe Diem. Carpe Diem has more subdued flavors and those are a bit more diversified. The almond is definitely way sweeter and less bitter. And I can really taste a stronger vanilla flavor in Carpe Diem than in the other.
I’ll definitely go and buy some during my next trip to Paris.

I recieved a very generous sample of The du Loup today when buying yet another tin of Theodor. I’m starting to feel like some kind of repeat record, but what a great tea! Considering that I have never liked a chocolate tea before, that’s saying something. Somehow this blend just works.

With other chocolate teas my overall feeling always used to be that it tries to substitute hot chocolate (the: this-is-good-for-your-diet-and-if-you-could-only-believe-it-preferable-to-the-real-thing). With this tea I don’t have that feeling. Of course it’s has a strong chocolate flavour and – especially – smell and isn’t ‘the real thing’, but it has such an own identity that I don’t feel cheated by the fact.

I’ll definately be buying this one!

I must say that Theodor at present is my favourite brand for flavoured teas.

I am not a big fan of rooibos.
I drank this tea by mistake…the cup was for my daughter, she wanted to try this one before me !…I took her mug in place of mine (full of Queen Catherine)
This tea is an exception…cteresa you won ! you found a rooibos I like ! sure there is strawberry and sure some raspberry as well, totally agree with you.I get the soft almonds and caramel notes.
And all these flavours are working fine together.

The dry leaf itself is noticeable it looks like little needles, so cute and rare.

I had tried this, or supposedly had tried this before, in a very tired, weak, limp sample, with not much taste. I know got an hermetically sealed bag directly from manufacturer and it is quite different from what I remember.

Honestly, I think this is Theodor´s take on Mariage Fréres Marco Polo. Marco Polo is a blend I have bought a few times throughout the years, sometimes it has been perfect, my most recent buy smells a bit too artifcial somehow. Place Saint Marc holds its weight, better than my more recent Marco Polo though not as good as my first tin of it. Black tea with some red fruits and some magic, vanilla and clearly other spices. I am always always going to have a place for this in my cupboard and my heart.

And a very lovely, not anodyne but just right base for the flavors. But I expected that from blender and they are ever reliable at it being good tea under the flavors.

Well, I had been warned by Barbara that this was a “delicate” flavour. Which is an euphemism for the flavour being rather weak. And it is, or rather the flavour is rather weak in the middle , in the mouth feel. It smells sublime, like strawberry jam or cheesecake with strawberry jam. And it leaves a wonderful aftertaste. It´s just those middle taste notes which seem surprisingly absent.

Barbara so kindly swapped a huge ammount with me so i have been experimenting with brewing this. This was on my wish list, and if I had smelled it I would have been sure to have bought it. Experimenting with brewing, and torturing this a bit (almost boiling water, long steep times) and like all Theodor teas I have had so far, oh this is nice and smooth, so easy to brew and difficult to spoil. There is a dry-ness (in the sense of dry wine) to the tea I find very appealing and refreshing. I am really enjoying it. I am just continously baffled by those absent middle notes.

My favorite way of brewing this is 1.5 teaspoons of dry leaf, water just short of boiling water and some 5 minutes. It survives that with distinction and very little astringency.

thank you so much cteresa for sharing this sample with me.
You’re definitively right : this thé du loup is a fantastic tea …and you know I ’m not a chocolatea lover…
The scent of the liquor is really chocolate (almost like Charlotte au Chocolat of Dammann Frères) but tasting it, I get the hazelnuts !

The tea base is not too strong finally and I was expecting a stronger black tea that’s why I didn’t steep it very long but I think I should try with a longer steeping time.
Anyway I like it very much but may prefer a more bodied tea with chocolate.

Thé du loup for sure is a masterpiece and deserves the high rates given here on Steepster.
A tea to recommend to chocolatea lovers – would you be my valentine dear wolf ?

Thank you so much cteresa for sharing some of this tea with me !
I should say right now : I like it but I prefer Nosy Bey from Dammann Frères.

Aroms of these two teas are really similar but different in the same time.Orchard peaches are just sublime in both blends.

First the scent of the dry leaf of Mélange de Galice is not as impressive as the Nosy Bey one : but it may be because the sample traveled a little by post mail.

Then, the vanilla seemed less present than in Nosy Bey.
The tea base is smooth and mellow, I really appreciate it.Everything is sweet in this Mélange de Galice and to me it is exactly what a peach & vanilla tea needs.

Cooling, the vanilla is more prominent.
The after taste is just sumptuous.

Nosy Bey, Mélange de Galice you are decadent teas ! I love that !!!

This was an extra sample from a swap with Barbara78, thank you so much, oh it was a lovely surprise. One I had to try at once.

I was in a total chai phase a couple months ago (cappuccino frother included) which seems to be abating – I decided to brew this western style instead in order to judge better.

And it is a great chai while being very different from my till-now definitive chai (Chandernagor). Like it, it has cloves! I love cloves in chai, it can add an extra dimension to all the other spices. Here it is more subtle. I can detect cinnamon as well, and ginger definitely. As well as vanilla. It is a perfectly balanced tea. Barbara found chocolate-like notes on it, I did not but must brew it again.

I am finding a certain quality to Thé-o-dor´s flavoured black teas, something I am struggling to describe but which I find very enjoyable, a certain on-the-exact edge balance of flavours with tea, nothing ever too strong nor too weak, a certain “just right”. And this is another winner!

Recently I tried this tea cold brewed. After putting it in the fridge I forgot all about it, so it sat there for approximately 1,5 days. This tea turns into a rather nice iced tea. The flavor is a bit less potent cold brewed when comparing to hot brewed but very suitable for a hot summer day!

When I smelled this tea dry I wasn’t overly enthousiastic. It smelled nice, but also a bit nauseating. However I’d decided I wanted a green tea with melon, so this was going to be it and boy am I happy with my choice! Brewed the smell is simply: wow! I’m in heaven and I haven’t even drunk it yet. The smell is really incredible. Although Meliorate comments on the peach flavour, I smell melons, melons, wonderful melons…

It tastes first and foremost of melons. I wonder about the green tea base. It is very delicate and mellow. Absolutely no astringency there. I get a hint of other flavours but would be hard pressed to identify them. Perhaps I wouldn’t even have noticed if I didn’t already know there are also peaches and raspberries in there.

The salesperson said this tea also makes a good iced tea and based on how it tastes hot, I expect it will (and I’m very fussy about iced tea).

Have you ever seen Hell’s Kitchen? There always is an episode in which the candidates have to taste various dishes blindfolded. More often than not de candidates can’t even recognize the most ordinary foods. That’s how I’m feeling now.

I smell the tea and think to myself: I know these smells, but can’t name them. Apart from that, I seem to smell something chocolate-ish, but according to the list of ingredients on the tin it isn’t or shouldn’t be in there…? I’ve browsed the net but can’t find any further specification. If I ever missed the full ingrients list on the website of The O Dor…

It smells sweet and spicey. The sweet will probably be the vanilla, although I don’t really recognize it as such. It melds very nicely with the more spicey spices in there, amongst which clove (and assuming vanilla is officially also a spice?). Perhaps that it is the combination that gives the chocolate-ish feel.

The base consists of a medium bodied black tea which balances nicely with the spices.

All in all a keeper!

A great straight tea with a sweet and somewhat ‘hay-ish’ taste. It reminds me of meadows on a hot summer afternoon a few hours after being mowed.

One tip however: don’t follow the brewing time. It’s way too long in my opinion and results in a rather ‘heavy’ taste, which is totally strange for a white tea…

You have to be careful to brew this tea according to the instruction or the lotus and fig will not be noticeable. However with correct brewing temp and time it’s a wonderful and very refined tea.

I recently discovered Theodor and love the unique and often experimental flavouring and their packaging. I’m less thrilled by the fact that instead of lists of ingredients the website only gives a characterisation of the tea by way of a ‘story’ which does not always include a full recounting of the ingredients.

This tea smells better than it tastes.

The smell is marvellous. It reminds me of muffins and cakes.

The taste is somewhat lighter than I’d expected. The vanilla is noticeable, the strawberries not so much. Hence the first line.

Overall a good tea, but I’m not sure I’ll be buying it again. Bought four tins of Theodor recently (Place Saint Marc, Saigon, Milky Oolong and J.E. Yin Zhen [Silver Needles]) and this tin is still – by far – the fullest.

Edit: Unfortunately I feel compelled to lower the rate on this one. Every time I brew a cup of tea I’m disappointed by the very light taste (or should that be delicate?) in comparison to the great smell. Tin is still – by far – the fullest… Won’t be buying it again and am considering giving it away.

At present my favourite tea especially with a slice of homemade white bread with red jam.

The scent is very distinctive. I love it but can’t accurately discribe it. Never smelled anything quite like it before. Someone commented that the smell is typical of oolongs. As this is my first oolong I can’t second that.

The taste is very smooth, sweet and buttery. In stead of leaning towards vegetal, is has a somewhat nutty basis (very faint). It also reminds me a bit of avocado’s, not in terms of exact taste, but rather in a likeness of character.

I got a sample of this tea from T (thank you again!). What can I say that she hasn’t said already? Almost nothing, so I’ll just say that I loved the peach and that I agree that it is lovely tea for cold winter days (and damn it, it is COLD here tonight!).
On a side note: my mother’s comment: “It’s too sweet”. Yeah, I’m still baffled by that too… maybe the peach?

Another taste note, just to add, that brewing this hot, it´s OK, interesting. Brewing this cold, with long steep times, it goes very very bitter. Cold steeping this for short (one hour) and then sweetening it, this is very very nice. Citrusy, herby and energizing (in a different way than regular caffeine).

Now it´s getting hot I have been trying different ways to brew this up. This taste note is a DO NOT DO AS I JUST DID warning.

I liked this brewed hot. I wanted to try a cold brew, which I just did – 4 grams of tea (which is a lot of volume, I weighted it and surprised myself at how much it was), half a liter of cold water left in the fridge overnight and then strained. And it turns out: bitter. Either it was much too long or too much tea.

I get some citrus yes, but I get an acrid bitterness mostly which is not pleasant. I did not use sweetener and not sure it would have improved it anyway, it´s not tartness which often can be rescued and improved by sugar, it was a different type of bitterness.

Weirdly enough, the older the tea (strained) got the more bitter it seemed to me. Despite that, I did drink almost all of it – I wanted to test if it was really that bitter and try to figure out where I went wrong. And as an energizer it did its usual work! A different type of wake me up than coffee or tea, a smoother one IMO.

This was an unexpected arrival, not the mate I wanted. I wanted toasted mate with red fruits, this is green mate with citrus and kola. But I now got 100 grams of it, not going to waste it.

I brewed it according to instructions, 75C for 3 minutes, a generous teaspoon of leaf per cup. And it is really quite nice, tastes of a blend of several citrus fruits with no underlying nasty notes from the mate, just a sort of nice base underneath.

It´s going to take me a few hours to judge properly the caffeine-like effects. And I think this might be very interesting brewed in cold water like tereré-style, except now is winter and cold drinks are not sounding that appealing! But if I still have some of this when summer comes, i got to try it cold brewed!

My lovely. I will never be without you as long as they make it.

I have bought this 4 times now, 2 of those times I bought 250 grams. It is as fantastic, as ever, no disappointment, in fact if you open the hermetically sealed bag, it is wow better than I remember. My family all love this – they got no nose and can not remember or id what tea is which but this one gets praised all the time by people who seem to not remember having had it before.

Dear Thé-o-dor as long as you keep making this and not messing it up, I will keep buying it.