Dammann Freres

One of the first teas I feelt in love with. A black tea so sweet and unique.

Sipdown (340)

This is a fine mint green tea. Softer than expected and more green tea base than anticipated. It’s fine but nothing special.

It’s 6.30 pm, and I am drinking first tea and more over caffeine boosting black, CTC, breakfast tea. It was foilwrapped ages ago, but when I smelled the old-school tea bag, it was still very aromatic of malt. I am not really sure why I haven’t prepared tea myself earlier, but I was as well rather busy today doing school work and… tomorrow it will be done hopefully.

Tea itself? Well, as I expected is quite malty, no way it is some old taste, or aroma. Still full-bodied. Bit woody maybe? But it is CTC tea.

I am happy it was decent, though old tea bag. I think it says something about the company. They are trying to keep the freshness.

This is a tea I have been using since a while now, and it seems I just have one more cup left. I bought it in a small tea shop in Pau, France (where I used to live), and cf another tea I bought there, I assume its origin is Dammann Frères as somebody on Steepster said it could well be.
In another tasting note I wrote that I´m quite fussy about orange flavoured teas. Nothing seems to come close to the taste of a real orange, and I don´t like it to overwhelmingly smell/taste as orange zest either. I love fresh oranges (and anything that comes close, like a good clementine), but a blood orange is really the top. The extra acidity of a good blood orange makes it so refreshing (as a matter of fact, when I juice oranges which are rather sweet I tend to add a lemon or a grapefruit to get the acidity up), in my opinion.
I bought the tea for it being blood orange flavoured, and although its original aroma´s have gone, this can still be noticed when brewing the black tea : it´s primarily a black tea, with the blood orange acidity coming through in the finish. Another positive note : there´s nothing artificial about the flavour. I really should try to get another bag or tin of this tea, to refresh my observations about the tea. So long, one more cup to go ;-)

The first cup of this that I tried pre-Christmas was very pleasant. A bit of almond, and some generic red fruits. All of the subsequent cups have been perfectly fine, but definitely more boring than I remember the first cup being. Still a decent tea, just a bit blah for me.

This smelled amazing brewing so I was a bit sad when it was incredibly tart. Very, very tart. Tart raspberry but tart is the operative word. It’s not bad. It’s just a lot. Goes nice enough with my avocado toast though.

Day 24 of our Advent Tea Swap. From amandastory516.

How appropriate to drink a Christmas tea on Christmas Day! I meant to have this one yesterday, but with all the food prep I never got around to having any tea at all. Today will be much more relaxed, so I plan to have lots of tea as the day goes on.

I’ve never tried a tea from Dammann Freres so I’m pretty excited about it. It seems fancy and just right for the day. It definitely tastes like a spiced tea to me, maybe with just a slight chocolate note as it cools. After doing a quick search of the ingredients, I’m bummed to find that I don’t taste the caramel or cherry. I have plenty of tea left to try another cup so I’ll save my rating until then.

For those who participated in our Advent tea swap, I just want to say thanks for including me! This has absolutely been so much fun and really gave me so much to look forward to each day. Thanks, Amanda, for being such a great swap partner!!

#adventageddon Day Twenty Three – 6/6

- Not really sure what this tea is meant to taste like; it’s hard t place
- The profile is light to medium bodied and sweetly fruity, but non very distinct
- It reminds me _loosely_of kiwi and pear!? But a little heavier/denser sans ANY acidity
- Whatever it’s intended to taste like, I must admit that it’s still pretty pleasant
- Bonus point because it’s NOT a cinnamon and orange mix!

Advent day 22! I was dubious when I saw this one. Chocolate teas are very hit or miss, but this one absolutely knocks it out of the park. It has sweet, caramel notes and just a bit of chocolate. It’s not chalky or synthetic tasting like so many chocolate teas tend to be. Really tasty and smooth.

#adventageddon Day Twenty One – 3/6

It’s technically after midnight now but I’m going to give myself a pass for not getting my tasting notes written before midnight today – mostly because I just spent the last eight hours in varying states of being in an airport and being at 20,000 feet in the air. I flew home to Saskatchewan today to visit my family for the holidays – so that interrupted adventageddon a little bit. However, I still managed to drink all the teas before midnight! Just not review them…

I had this one on my second flight of the day – from Toronto to Regina. In a case of “very small world” I ended up seated next to someone I knew from Regina but, as if it wasn’t a strange enough coincidence, that person was also a former coworker from DAVIDsTEA! So it was actually a really nice flight home despite it being really fucking late at night. The only downside was that a women one aisle up from us decided to use the three hours to play Coronation Street on her phone at a loud volume without wearing headphones…

I continued my tradition of drinking teas on airplanes with this one – which conveniently was in sachet form. It was pretty good and the raspberry flavour really comes through a lot more strongly than I would have expected it to. Very tart, juicy raspberry as well! I get a sense of something tropical, but I don’t feel as though that flavour is as well developed/fleshed out. It was a nice tea regardless, and a very refreshing change of pace from the other teas I’ve had from DF so far!

Advent day 20! Pretty underwhelmed by this tea. So much citrus in the DF advent. Pretty standard lemon black tea.

#adventageddon Day Twenty – 1/6

Today was awesome, but not because of the advent teas. No, what was really amazing was finally meeting VariaTEA in person after seven years of tea swaps! We met up at the DT office where I got to give her a tour (and tease some upcoming teas) and have a quick little Gongfu session as well as a QC tasting, and then I gave her a frankly absurd amount of tea samples – followed by some poutine! It was absolutely lovely meeting you in person!!

Of course, I asked for hot water at the restaurant because I still had advent teas to get through today even it was the last day of work at the office before our holiday break and I was spending the afternoon with VariaTEA – this was the only bagged advent tea that I had left at this point, so it’s the one I made.

To be honest it wasn’t unpleasant but it was a little bit boring. I don’t know why there have been so many advent days where it’s just felt like the flavour profiles selected by tea companies have just overlapped, but there were two Earl Grey blends in today’s selections. This was definitely the better of the two (the other being Tea Revv’s Ice Cream Earl Grey) but I didn’t think there were any unique or differentiating notes in the cup. It was a good lunch tea, I suppose – since it was a reliable but typical EG profile.

Advent day 19! I really didn’t care for this one. It was very, very weak and tasted almost entirely of cardamom and cloves.

#adventageddon Day Eighteen – 6/6

Thank the stars for a DF blend today that wasn’t orange and ginger! I did notice that a lot of my advent teas today were really tropically flavoured, but this was maybe actually my favourite!? It’s nice and medium bodied, and it tastes really nicely of candied passionfruit or mango. That sweet, syrupy tropical note without the intense tartness you might experience from fresh passionfruit. The oolong is a little floral, and it pairs nicely as well. The flavour kind of builds on your palate over the course of the mug, and the taste is just really clean and well balanced. Definitely a surprise hit for me!

Advent day 17! I was scared when I saw a rooibos today, but it’s actually one of my favorite teas in the DF advent so far! The rooibos flavor isn’t too prominent, and there are some really nice gingerbread and orange notes that were really enjoyable.

Advent catch up. This was just straight fennel to me. Definitely not something I would describe as a ‘lovely chai.’ Pretty one note, and not something I would ever reach for again.

Advent day…something! I got a bit behind on drinking some of my advent teas. I was very happy to see an oolong, as I generally love them. But, this was another odd combination from DF. Another citrus tea. The buckwheat was especially distinct tasting in this for me, which I didn’t entirely care for.

Advent day 15! Toffee/caramel and lemon sounded very intriguing, so I was excited to try this one! Unfortunately, I found the caramel flavor to be a bit plasticy, which I didn’t care for. It was nice to see a change of pace from all of the straight citrus that seems to be in this advent.

#adventageddon Day Fourteen – 5/6

Not entirely sure that I understand the choice of picking a tea where the dominant flavour is orange as the follow up to a day where the tea’s dominant flavour was also orange. The orange flavour was really nice/tasty but it also felt identical to yesterday’s tea, minus the lack of ginger in this cup and with the addition of some mineral and toasted nut notes coming from the oolong base tea. I’m happy there’s been at least one oolong tea in this advent but I honestly think I’d have enjoyed it more if it wasn’t so close to yesterday’s equally orange tasting tea.

As it stands, I felt like I was drinking basically the same tea over again. Thankfully it was a nice tea…

I could not tell you what is in this. I really have no idea. But I really liked it. Like two sips and it was gone and I was sad. Citrus. Awesome mix of spices. Holiday tea through and through which is awesome b/c my holidays officially started as of 11:30 am. Also paired nicely with the cinnamon sugar coated caramel apple I have been saving for celebrations.

Advent day 13! More citrus? The DF website describes this tea as having a “bouquet of spices,” which I’m just not getting. Perhaps a bit of cinnamon, but it’s mostly orange. I found this to be another boring offering, but in no way bad.

Sipdown! 288/365!

Unfortunately, I don’t recall much about this tea except that it was somewhat floral and fairly palatable? Pretty bad description, I know. Apologies to Sil, from whom I obtained this sample!

Advent day 12! I found this to be another odd choice for an advent calendar. There seems to be a lot of fruity greens. This one was fine but not particularly special. Some mild peach and orange blossom, but generally pretty one-note.