I enjoyed the original version of The du Hammam, which is a green fruit blend with dates, but the green leaf and the super-sweet date in the blend wasn’t my preference. To my good fortune, I was offered a chance to try the black leaf version of this recipe, which features a wonderful smoky, floral, spicy keemun as the base and swaps the dates for rhubarb.
Fantastic! None of the ingredients overpower each other, it’s fruity without being super-sweet or astringent, and the richness of the keemun just keeps me coming back to my mug. Notes range from floral, red-fruit, spice, and I even detected some chocolate in the sip because the keemun is just that good (no chocolate in the ingredient list).
Definitely worth trying if you haven’t yet – it wasn’t listed in their Theophile catalog, but it’s available on their U.S. website, so it might be fairly new. They have a rooibos version as well that I haven’t tried yet. But I will definitely be ordering more of this Black Leaf The du Hammam.
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Bio
Still fairly new to the life-long process of learning and appreciating tea. Got into loose leaf a number of years ago after health concerns cut soda and sugared drinks from my repertoire. I’ve been blogging about and exploring tea more in-depth for the past several years and I just plain enjoy it. I keep an eye out for French tea trends as well, so if you parlez, bienvenue!
My ratings tend to fall into these categories:
I don’t bother discussing teas that I wouldn’t recommend to other folks on some level. Not worth drinking, not worth wasting time, so you won’t see many yellow light scores from me. I will, however, post if a tea is marketed as something it’s not. There are a couple of examples in my tea log.
50-70’s : Fair. Either a quality or grade issue or perhaps not suited to my personal preference. Wouldn’t turn it down if it were a gift, but wouldn’t purchase it for myself.
80’s: Good teas. Enjoyable and well-crafted, but maybe some slight room for improvement or maybe a notch below another of the same type that I’ve tried. Would buy again if the price were reasonable.
90’s: Excellent teas. My personal favorites that I’ve fallen in love with and have been surprised by.
I don’t know that I’ve ever rated a 100, which is why the 80’s and 90’s are more representative of the teas I like and would recommend. A 96 is just about perfect.
