Caramel-Toffee

farewell delicious tea. I’ll think of you often on my imaginary trips back to france in my mind :) I still enjoy this one, in part because the flavouring doesn’t overpower the tea base. Loved it! will miss it!

Even though I have a pile of other DF teas to try that I haven’t had before, this one was calling my name this afternoon. This is one of those teas where my mouth starts watering the minute that the pouch opens. So much buttery toffee goodness.

And so much buttery toffee goodness in the flavor too! I would agree that this is perhaps more toffee than straight caramels, but it’s really a continuum anyway. It’s a tea that tricks my brain into thinking its sweet, even though there isn’t any actual sweetness to the tea. The black base is present in this one, but to me that’s a good thing. Glad I restocked this one!

Thank you Dexter3657!! This one smells SOOO good. I did not realize how much I wanted to try this tea until I smelled the amazingly caramel deliciousness of the steeped cup. However, when I took my first sip, the flavor was not nearly as strong. In fact, I mostly get the caramel-toffee in the aftertaste as opposed to in the sip itself. It is a good cup but after having Je T’aime, I am left just a little underwhelmed. I am very grateful to have gotten to try it though!

This tea smells yummy! I tried it first without any sweetener, and then added a little bit of raw sugar and found that this brought out the caramel-y goodness. This would also be very good as a latte with some steamed, frothed milk… but I don’t really feel like getting out my frother, so I think I’ll just drink it as is… it’s really good this way.

It’s hard for me to drink another caramel tea without comparing it to my Sweet Caramel o’Mine, because, well… I really like my Sweet Caramel O’Mine. :) But to be fair, I will try to leave that bias at the door.

This is a very good tea. The black tea base is smooth and rich. It is a non-assuming kind of black tea, that is, it doesn’t try to overwhelm the flavor of the caramel toffee. I love the buttery notes here. It reminds me a lot of a piece of… well, caramel toffee! Once upon a time, I used to make my own (when I didn’t have kids and a lot of other responsibilities that kept me from doing things like that) and this reminds me of that fresh, buttery toffee.

It’s just sitting here on my desk – how can I not try it? Yes, yes, I know I need to parse some out to various Steepsterites that have asked for samples or part of this order – and I will. I’m just waiting to pick up the NINE packages of tea currently waiting for me at the border, when the snow dies down a bit and I feel safer making my way there.

So until then… ;)

This is a lovely, full-bodied tea with zero sweetener needed, although it does punch up the caramel flavoring somewhat. And it’s the caramel here that takes center stage for me: chewy, juicy, gooey caramel amidst the black base. I could easily drink this every day.

first I’m VERY sorry for the onslaught of tea logging with just photos! i just got back from holiday and i documented all of the tea i drank and really want to get them logged before normal life catches back up with me and i forget the details. i will add tasting notes later but for now the pictures do a lot to help me remember what tea i had and what the experience was like.

this tea is one i purchased in bulk so it was an opened bag and i felt like i could enjoy it while traveling. i LOVED EVERY SINGLE CUP I BREWED! this was a great purchase. in fact visiting this store was probably my favorite. the place was so beautiful. (my boyfriend said it reminded him of harry potter) and the customer service was lovely. tea places have a tendency to be uptight settings. and i have a tendency to be anti authority. so it’s always a strange balance that is struck between me and my surroundings. add to that the fact that i barely speak any french and you get a strange dynamic. the customer service people at the store were professional but super helpful and friendly. i definitely wanted to go back and buy more. …i just couldn’t fit any more tea in my travel bags.

i will add another note.
this is the most saddest thing ever.
but when i left the states i had bad bad allergies.
and they went away when i got to Paris, however my sinuses themselves were still slightly infected and irritated.
those who are prone to sinus infections already know what this means…
I COULDN’T SMELL ANYTHING MY ENTIRE TIME IN PARIS! all the tea shops! all the pastries! all the fine beers and brewery’s in Brussels! i couldn’t smell any of it!!
it was a special kind of hell at times, but i made due. and made my boyfriend smell teas and tell me what they made him think of. haha he was at a loss but tried his best. and i am so grateful.

here is a cup i brewed in Hamburg
http://instagram.com/p/YRv-jpoc6V/

I have decided to add this tea to my order because of the high ratings here on Steepster and because your notes here were really enthusiastic.

Opening the bag, I get a delicious smell of toffee, really toffee, not caramel.
Drinking it, it’s a pleasant caramel and toffee tea.It’s not a complex tea, it’s a pleasant tea.
For me, it is a kind of “lack of character” and I was probably expecting too much from this tea.
I have now a lot of caramel teas and from far my favourite one remains Wedding impérial from MF.It’s a totally different tea and they cannot be compared but I cannot forget its strong character each time I have another caramel tea…complicated…

While cooling, the toffee taste is much present and overtakes the caramel, I prefer that.
Very nicely blended tea.
Caramel-Toffee you may have been my lover if I haven’t have met Wedding Impérial first :)

Tomorrow is my son’s birthday and I although I took the day off of work, I was scurrying around pretty much all day making preparations and it was every bit as stressful as going into the office. I considered taking a nap when I got home, but instead, it appears I will be drinking tea.

I got some cool little tea storage cans, and I decided that ritually transferring my Dammann Freres teas that Doulton so lovingly packed up after our buying fandango into these little tins would give me a great opportunity to sniff all of them and decide what one to taste next. I had to peel her labels off and stick them onto the tins (this one has a lion on it, my totem animal or at least one of them) because they’re so adorable. Anyway, this one called to me. It has an amazing, amazing smell coming out of the dry leaves. It’s a thick, rich, caramel that you can almost see melted and dripping over ice cream. Yum!

The aroma of the tea has a milder caramel smell, and the tea’s own rich, dreamy aroma comes out as well. Rich is a word I think I’ll be using a lot here. Just a warning.

I love the way this tastes. It’s… rich. It’s sweet, but not too sweet. It’s deep. It’s a seamless blend with the tea. It’s smooth. It has that French black tea blend thing going on that makes you want to take a spoon to the leaves. They seem as though they’d melt on your tongue like mousse. (Though I wouldn’t try this at home, or anywhere for that matter.)

A good, comforting choice to punctuate a hectic day before the hectic evening picking up kids, getting them fed, getting homework done, etc. starts.

After the wonderful experience with Mariage Frères’ Wedding Impérial yesterday, I decided to try their competitor’s caramel tea: Dammann Frères’ Caramel-Toffee! I don’t know if they’re really competitors per say, or if these teas will be at all alike, but this is my tasting note and I’ll do what I want! LOL! Man, I’ve been feeling wonky lately. I hope you’ll excuse my weirdness.

The dry leaf aroma is pure caramel toffee sugary sweetness! It has little toffee cubes and smells much more sugary than Wedding Impérial. Mmm, I can’t wait to try this one! I much prefer Chinese and Ceylon blacks to Assam. So, maybe I’ll like this more? It hardly seems possible, but one way to find out!

Hmm, the brewed tea aroma is good, but the flavor is much less intense than I was expecting. With Truvia added, it’s more enjoyable. But I don’t think there’s any chance this will steal the limelight away from Wedding Impérial. It’s sweet and has a nice caramel toffee flavor. The base seems weak and quiet, which surprises me. I steeped it for 4 minutes! Maybe Assam is just a better base for these flavors.

I definitely like it, and it’s a very enjoyable cuppa. But if I’m craving a caramel tea, I have other teas I prefer to this one. I do have to add that the caramel seems to become more buttery the longer I sip it. This is a tea that grows on you with its flavor instead of whopping you upside the head with it upon the first sip. Thanks to Shmiracles for making this tasting possible!

oh my goodness, this for me smellls exactly like dulce de leche icecream – now it would not be on a personal list of flavours i knew i wanted, or go in a list of my utmost favorites but dulce de leche, awww, how can anyone not love it? so love at first sniff.

but regardless of the wonderfulness of the scent, the weakness is a familisr one with Dammann´s teas – the base tea is their usual one, and while adequate for so many of their other flavoured teas, here it is just not up to the task. Too wimpy.

But am going to enjoy very much the rest of the sample (thanks Ysaurella!), though I confess this is making me very curious instead about Dammann´s caramel toffee rooibos, or what other tea companies whose bases vary more often would do with the idea of a caramel tea.