Héritage Gourmand - Financier

CharlotteZero was kind enough to send me a sample of this one quite a while ago, and while I took notes on it I never got around to logging it here. This is a pleasant tea. It’s sweet and creamy, and it reminds me more than anything of vanilla frosting (though I’ve never had a financier so can’t say how much it resembles its namesake). There’s a hint of almond too. While the base isn’t too assertively vegetal, I’m just not sure I love the combination of these sorts of flavors with green tea (see my aversion to Butiki’s Creamy Eggnog). I wouldn’t buy this, especially given the price, but I’m glad to have had a chance to sample it.

Okay, time to break into these Heritage Gourmand samples from boychik. Actually I’m told these samples originally came from CharlotteZero, whom I don’t know and who hasn’t been around much lately. All I can say is, thank you and I hope you come back soon! :) This tea is based on a financier, which is a French almond and brown butter cake similar to a pound cake. Yum! The tea itself looks like a sencha, the leaves are large and flat and somewhat broken. There are a few toasted almond slices mixed in. Dry scent is sweet with honey and almond notes. I steeped about 1.5 teaspoons of leaf for 3 minutes at 175 degrees, which is my general flavored green method.

Once brewed, this tea smells very sweet and cakey with lovely butter, vanilla, and almond (nut, not extract) aromas. It smells so sweet, it’s almost like frosting or meringue. This one is a bit lighter on flavor that I would like. However, it definitely does taste like a butter and almond cake. There’s something here that tastes like vanilla frosting as well, yum! The green tea itself is just kind of grassy and nondescript, which is a shame. I could see this being very good with a nice buttery dragonwell or something similar. Overall, it’s good, but not great, especially considering the price.

I tried my first cup of this on Friday but over sweetened it so held off on the review. Used the rest of my sample from CharlotteZero today.

This tastes like an almond pastry of some sort. The almond doesn’t taste like almond extract, more like raw almonds, which I really like about this tea. Even though I like almond extract, its nice to have an almond tea that is a little bit different, and more mellow with the almond flavour. I think they could have gone with a different base, the one they used was quite boring and didn’t contribute much to the overall flavour. I drank the first half of the cup without milk and the second half with, and I prefer it with milk. I really enjoyed this one and if I make an MF order this will be going in my basket.

This is good. Not as good as the Canelé, but it’s just what I wanted it to be. A tea that tastes like little buttery almond cake. I wonder how this will compare to the madeleine, because in my mind a financier and a madeleine are the same to me… :-/