Fruits d'Alsace

Today is a day to drink teas I like, I’ve decided, and after a long morning of stress and work, I’m going to take a moment with fruits D’ alsace, a much enjoyed tea that I’ve neglected for a while.
Fruity, rich, and with the Harney smoothness that I know and love. Yum.

This is one of the samples sent to me by Russel Allyn of Harney and Sons.

This is actually a tea I already had in my cupboard, so I am going to gift this sample out to someone wanting to try it!

I have served it at tea time and my guest and I both Ike it a lot. We have been drinking it hot and sans additions. Smelling the cherry aroma enticed me to make it as an iced tea. Last night, I put five teaspoons of dry leaf in my 22 ounce pot. I boiled a kettle of water and put two tablespoons of raw sugar in a pitcher. Part of the boiling water went over the sugar to dissolve it while I steeped the tea. After five minutes steeping, I added the strong tea to the very hot water in the pitcher. I added a wee bit of ice and let it sit out on the counter for a while, then popped it in the refrigerator. The tea stayed a lovely color and did not cloud.

I drank it with lunch on the patio. This is very refreshing! I guess I got the proportions just right because the sweetness and flavor levels all match the bottled Harney iced tea that I tried on Sunday. (Keep in mind that a normal Carolina lady would have added at least 3/4 cup of sugar to that little pitcher! My mother used three cups of sugar for a gallon of iced tea, and balked when I cut it back to two!)

The fruity taste is light and refreshing, really delightful and good. I think this would even be good with no sugar at all, but one step at a time, friends, one step at a time!

Thank you for the inspiration, Russel!

Ok, epic fail here. and I don’t even think it’s the tea, necessarily.

Last night, I decided to go buck wild and do a cold-brew of this. First attempt at a cold brew ever. No one was going to stop me!
So I put a few tsp of leaf into a mug, popped it into the fridge, and pulled it out about eighteen hours later. It didn’t taste bad, but it didn’t taste good, either. Here were my problems.
1) I don’t like cold drinks. Like ever. If I could have all my drinks (other than those that are meant to be hot) at room temperature, I would. This includes pop and juice, and also includes all four seasons—I don’t like ice-cold drinks ever. So that was like a million percent of the problem.
2) I couldn’t get out of my mind that this was a hot tea, and that tea isn’t supposed to taste cold ever. I didn’t grow up drinking iced tea, so just the whole concept felt really strange. besides, this tasted like little more than slightly flavoured sugary water, and I just couldn’t get behind it. so I dropped it like it was cold and that was the end of that. A few of you are getting samples of this, and that’s how I’ll finish the tin! woohoo!

Cold brew of this one tonight as well. I think I prefer it hot to be honest. Th cold brew just seemed to flatten the flavours and make it less appealing to me. Still a nice tea, but not as versatile as I’d hoped.

Well I want to give a HUGE Thank You to ashmara for this sample which is more than a sample in my opinion! I love this tea!!!!!
I have yet to try Tower of London yet wonderful generous ashmara also sent me a sample of that!
When I opened the bag I got wiffs of sweet yummy fruit and RUM!
The tea even tastes a smidgen like rum and fruit!
Oh yes I AM going to make some of this cold steeped!
I am absolutely ordering more when this is gone and I am doing a little happy dance right now! Not often do I fill my cup before it is empty but this one was half gone and I was dumping more in! I need a larger cup for that matter!
I also saw the BIGGEST cherry in my basket when I measured the tea out!
YAY!
Most of my fruit flavored teas are green ones. I needed another good solid black fruity tea in my stash and this is going to be in my PERM stash!
Love love love!
ashmara you made the cutest little name tags for the tea samples! Thank you – really appreciate this!

So I haven’t posted in a few days or checked the logs, but I’m ok you guys. I’m okay.

Things are crazy getting ready for the move to Toronto. Friday was my last day of work. The weekend was spent moving a good friend/my roommate into her own apartment, and yesterday was a quick trip to the island to visit family. So much traveling!

I’ll catch up when I can.

But on to this tea. It’s so sweet and smooth. I’m really happy I split a tin of this. I couldn’t quite identify the fruit flavours, but then I read the description (i.e. cheated), and I can totally seperate the apricot, plum and cherry flavours in my head. This is delicious. And as I said before, super sweet.

I think there was real dried fruit in there – there’s a bit of sediment left in my cup which is unappetizing but doesn’t change how good the cup is if I don’t look at the tea. :|

Are a lot of icons missing from the top (like the steepster logo itself) and on anyone else’s dashboards or is it just me? The best part is already knowing by heart exactly where to click anyway haha

Thank you Azzrian for a sample of this tea. I don’t know how I completely missed it from the one time I ordered from H&S because I would jump on anything to do with Alsace. Not my favorite place from my study abroad trip (i.e., Parisians aren’t the rude ones if you go to Strasbourg. I took Italian for 2 semesters and I always end up pronouncing French and Spanish words like they’re Italian…so I did so for “chantilly” and this woman FLIPS on me like you’d think I said chant-lily or something when all I did was pronounce the l’s! And people just stared at me while I was waiting at a bus stop. It was tacky.) but I still really enjoyed my time there.

This is such an interesting combination of fruits. I’m mostly getting cherry and plum, though I smell the apricot. It’s pretty sweet too, it almost feels too early for something this sweet but I will make it through.

I just really can’t get over how fruity it is, and it just tastes really good. As it cools, the black tea comes out a bit more since while it was really hot it was like a barrage of fruit flavors. There’s a nice balance between the flavors and the tea. I am going to finally have to get some of this.

This might taste better than most things I had in Alsace…but not tarte flambee by any means.

Blah.Blah.Blah.
I thought I was better, but alas I was fooled.
I did too much too quickly and my nasty flu thing came back with a vengeance.
Not sure why when the throat aches and the nose runs, I reach for this tea.
It just soothes the spirit.
I can’t wait till I smell and taste and get back to reviewing all these delicious teas I have around, but for now, I have a mug of this, a new book and snuggly pets.
See previous notes for more on this tea.

My Harney order arrived today!! This is one of the teas I ordered based on reviews from my fellow Steepsterites – I sure am glad that I took a chance on this one. This reminds me quite a bit of Paris and Tower of London and I love both of those teas so I love this one also. I love how smooth the base of this tea is and that it is tasty both plain and with additions. I’m currently drinking it with a bit of sugar and cream which really makes the fruit flavors pop. I’m getting cherry more than apricot or plums and that is fine by me as I ADORE cherries. In fact, I also ordered Sour Cherry Preserves from Harney’s site (which I totally recommend! Also the black tea and fig preserves are good if you like figs). I don’t think this would be a good first thing in the morning tea as it is pretty smooth, but definitely a great afternoon/evening choice.

Thank you OMGsrsly for sharing. This is a very nice tea. The black base is present but not overpowering or astringent. The fruits are sweet and different than the typical flavor combination. This stays clear of berries and instead tastes of apricot and plums. Very nice although I don’t think this is something I would drink all that often. Nonetheless, I am glad to have a couple more tsps to enjoy.