Spicy Coco

Dammann Frères Advent Day 15 (15-February 2021)

This tea smells delicious dry. Very fruity. The flavour is really well done here. The passionfruit comes through clearly and is so delicious. It feels very tropical. There’s a hint of spiciness that doesn’t overtake and adds some depth. A is loving this one too, and we would definitely order this for our cupboard.

Advent 15.

This is on par with Miss Dammann, both green teas with passionfruit flavoring. I thought it was going to be a coconut chai on a green base but it’s so much not that and more. It’s actually a delicately spiced passionfruit green tea and one that is very well done. Dammann Frères, to me, has mastered the application of passionfruit flavoring. It’s just so bright and vibrant! The spices, as I said, were delicate and they kind of twinkled among the passionfruit. I tasted cinnamon and slight clove more in the first steep. In the second steep, I tasted more the herbal-cooling cardamom and floral-spicy pink peppercorn after I crushed them both. I wasn’t too stoked about reading coconut flavoring in the ingredients (it’s so often cloying), but it seems to add a very slight creamy tone, no flavor per se.

The base tea… it’s a good one, mild, thick and glassy. I like Dammann Frères base teas. They really pay attention to mouthfeel, which no other flavored tea companies really seem to do. I think that’s what I like so much about DF.

After I drank this tea, I was thinking about tea blending and flavoring as the process of designing a masterpiece pleasing to the senses. When you admire a beautiful or intriguing artistic composition or architectural phenomenon or fashion piece, there are always focal points and flows to and from those focal points. That’s what I feel like is happening with DF teas. To my tongue, they’re art.

2020 Advent Calendar – Day 15 Oh my goodness, I love this one! What a delicious combination. And as it cools it gets even better! The cinnamon is so soft and gently sweet, not overpowering at all. The cardamon spice is positively lovely. The passion fruit is very present with its fruitiness, and the coconut is delicious! It makes the whole cup feel softly exotic and almost milky. It’s magical to me. I did not want my cup to end!

Which is incredibly funny because I did not want to drink this one at all. The description made it sound like a chai tea, or at the very least a tea that was a full-on spice affair. But this doesn’t feel like a chai tea to me at all.

Dammann Frères Advent Calendar – Day 15 (from November backlog)

Wow, this is not at all what I expected from the name. I was thinking it would be some sort of coconut chai, but it looks and smells similar to Miss Dammann (one of my favorites).

I do get a little bit of coconut, but it’s extremely light. It has some passionfruit, which explains the similarity to Miss Dammann. There are also some lovely light spices that I’m not sure I can identify, perhaps clove? And there’s a little peppery heat as well from peppercorns. The green base is very mild with a light and sweet flavor.

Overall, I really like it, and it does remind me of Miss Dammann. That being said, I think I prefer the lime and ginger in that blend over the coconut and spices here. But both are delicious!