Pleine Lune - Full Moon

This tea is like liquid Biscotti.
Makes a killer Pleine Lune ice cream (based on Bruce Weinstein’s Earl Grey ice cream recipe)

Ce thé malheureusement ne va pas franchir la barre des 80. Ce thé est vraiment trop parfumé trop fort etc … Mais je l’aime bien malgré sa je me le fais environ une fois par semaine c’est un thé de chez mariages frères qui pour moi est la plus luxueuse marque de thé . Je me le suis acheté en version plus douce qui est Full Moon Party que j’adore . breff les odeurs de ce thé me plaise beaucoup mais peut être un peut trop chargé malheureusement … kiss

For me this tea is a little like a collage of food memories. I smell blackcurrant like ribena but taste a sharp mix of cherry, grapefruit and grenadilla, mixed with crushed almonds, and a spice note that reminds me of barfi ( an Indian milk sweet), flavoured with rose water, cardamon, pepper, and cinnamon and a reference to Vanilla.

In the second steep the cherry notes are much more apparent.

Its very warming and makes me think of fall and winter. The tea brews to a maple colour and has a thick dense texture provided by the tannins in the base and the spice.

Quite a lovely, fruity, spicy tea with nice almond notes apparent. Thanks JustJames for this fabulous sample. I quite like this tea but I think I like Thé de Lune even better.

Could it be over the top? Definitely. However, like many of the Freres tea, it comes together in harmony. It can be quite a luxury though.

Funny, I’ve had this for a while in teabag format, and have yet to drink it. As I grabbed some to send off to someone else, I decided it was high time to brew some up for myself. Yay for treating myself to expensive tea!

The flavor surprised me. When it was still piping hot, I got more fruit marzipan than anything, and now as it cools it’s more of a super creamy macaron with a slight stone fruit flavor to it. Could be all manner of fruits, I’m having a hard time picking out which over the almond.

A lovely, surprising tea, and one that I’ll savour.

From the queue, written March 29th 2014

Anna sent this one to me, I think. Or possibly it was in the EU TTB round 2. I’m not certain. I found one of Anna’s number stickers loose in the box of things not yet tried, and I’m not certain which bag it fell off. It’s definitely of Anna origin, though, because she’s the only one I know who packs samples this way.

It is also a tea that several people have recommended to me on account of me liking almond flavoured tea recently, and it has been generally well rated on Steepster too, so I’m dealing with one of those popular blends now that everybody seems to drink.

I hope I won’t be disappointed.

It smells wonderfully marcipan-y. More marcipan than almond, really. There’s also something else there that I can’t really put my finger on and I don’t think it’s the base tea.

Turns out that there was something else in here. It’s something fairly tart and berry-y. Not Dreaded Hibiscus tart, but berry tart. I’m not sure what it is. Perhaps cherries? Normally I would have enjoyed a spot of berries, but the aroma here really led me to believe I was about to have something almond-y and marcipan-y, and I don’t think I got that. At all. It’s very difficult for me to find a marcipan-y note, but there is an almond-y note which comes out mostly in the aftertaste.

I have to say, I am actually a little disappointed. I want more almond. Less berry.

The description of it just says ‘honey, rare spices and and fruits’. Well I found the fruits in the shape of possibly-cherries. I can’t say I found anything resembling either rare spices and definitely no honey. I got nearly-almond in vast amounts in the aroma and a little in the flavour, but that can’t really be categorised as neiter honey nor rare spice.

Hm.

This was not what I expected. And definitely not what I had hoped. Boo.

This is the first Mariage Freres tea that I’m trying thanks to Stephanie! I’m actually going to be in Paris in June, so I thought it would be most appropriate on this rainy day to continue planning my trip while sipping on this tea! First off, the dry leaf is so pretty with the blue bits of cornflower (I think) and nuts. Plus, it smelled wonderfully sweet without being overwhelming. I steeped for a few minutes, and right away I can smell the spices. It smells mainly like cinnamon to me, but I have a hard time distinguishing between similar flavors. The tea is nice and sweet with the most distinct notes being cinnamon and almond to me. I do think there is a bit of something missing that makes the tea taste a bit empty toward the end of the sip. It may be the black tea base is not strong enough? Or perhaps I simply underleafed. Anyway, it’s a good thing I have another serving of this one left because it is hitting the spot today!

Utterly lovely. I bought Pleine Lune and Dammann’s Coquelicot Gourmand around the same time and I got a very similar impression from them both: sweet, almondy, lovely. I realized that I didn’t really differentiate between the two, so I decided to do a comparison and brewed a cup of each, and whoa: suddenly I could really taste the spiciness in Pleine Lune! I have no idea now how I missed it before, but sometimes I really just need a comparison to let all the individual flavours and notes come out. I think this makes is a more complex tea than Coquelicot, though not a ‘better’ one, since they’re both kind of perfect.

I’ve been trying to reel in my tea and other purchases lately as we save up our funds for a vacation this year. However, as the saying goes, “The best laid plans of mice and men often go on rye bread,” or something like that. Anyhow, I couldn’t resist purchasing this selection when I saw that it was black, spicy, and contained almonds.

When I broke the seal of the metal container, my nose was rushed with a spicy almond aroma. My first thought was that this smell would be fantastic on freshly baked cookies.

I steeped the short black leaves with multi-colored bits for five minutes at 212 degrees. The brewed color was a reddish gold. The aroma carried on the spicy almond theme.

The taste of this tea in its natural state was already quite sweet. Any added sweeteners would make the flavor so sugary (even for me!) that my teeth would hurt.

The flavor was very cordial, though. The almond and spice attributes were very pronounced and harmonious. I wasn’t able to put my finger (or taste buds) on any recognizable fruit component, but the sweetness probably originated from that element. The only other taste that I could identify was a smooth and subtle black tea accessory in the background.

The after taste was also pleasant and it didn’t linger any longer than necessary. There was no bitterness and I thoroughly enjoyed my cup.

This was only my second journey into the world of Mariage French teas. I am also a fan of their Marco Polo offering. Although I am reviewing this Pleine Lune tea at breakfast, it would be an exquisite afternoon tea as well. I would love to join it with a plate of British tea biscuits (the WHOLE plate)!

Another night time themed tea today!

Very grateful that keychange gave me a sample of this. It sounded better than it is…the honey flavor leaves a weird after taste. It isn’t terrible, just a little weird/artificial tasting. shrug this is why I love swapping samples!