Fauchon

How refined, how elegant this tea is ! It’s fantastic.
I am having it after my congou keemum by Butiki Teas and I loved it so much I wasn’t expecting too much of this second tea to drink just behind.

This is THE most famous tea of Fauchon. I choose this one because I loved how its smell not because of its fame.
Brewing it and tasting it now I am particularly impressed by the way the aromas are coming on the same time: together and distinctively.
None of the aromas, vanilla lavender and citrus, are overpowering.
The 3 are working so well together, waaaa, the person who created this combination is just a genious.
The day begins on a lovely note : I had 2 teas, totally different, I really really loved for so different reasons.

Another Sipdown from my box of teas from NofarS!
I enjoyed this Darjeeling while I was teaching this afternoon, after all the errand running, but before the stove repair & cleaning. It has as light fruitiness, along with a floral aspect to it. A nice afternoon tea.

Getting through lots of my cupboard today! This one (#62) is one I kind of wish was an unroasted TGY, instead of roasted. It’s pretty tasty, but I still prefer unroasted. Just the smell is not that appealing to me; it smells toasty and roasted and a bit woody. But the flavor is better, with more orange flavor and nuttiness. I also wish for more almond flavor. I wonder how this would be as a cold brew?

This has been popping up on people’s dashboards a lot lately since it’s one of the ones currently at TJ Maxx group stores. Seeing it inspired me to pull my tin out, which I bought about a year ago in Paris when this first was released.

I am definitely still a fan of this one, and I probably like it more now than I did when I got it because my fondness for traditionally roasted tieguanyins has increased. The toasty, freshly-baked bread flavors that come out in that really complement the almond here, and the orange provides a nice bright counterpart. Kind of like almond orange sweet bread, which sounds like a bread I would like to make. I especially like this one as it cools down.

It’s been a while. I’ve been crazy busy with no time for tea (gasp!), which is sad. I also haven’t been reading tasting notes, so do let me know if I’ve missed anything (I won’t have time to go back through them all, you lot are prolific!).

Continuing my cupboard chronology? I bet you forgot about it! I’m still mid-French tea boom, though, so I’m more than happy to keep going.

Ahh, Paris. Since I first purchased and tasted this tea I have grown a lot fonder of traditional TGYs and their roasty toasty notes. So while it was surprising to me that I enjoyed this one as much as I did when I first tried it, this time is no shock. Delish! Unlike many Fauchon teas, I find the flavoring on this one to be more subtle. Light citrusy orange blossom, and a rich almond that comes out more in the aftertaste but lingers like you just ate some marzipan. Definite yum.

Also I realized that I have just been boiling all of my TGYs now. I used to think that they needed lower temps, like 195°F, since they were green oolongs and delicate or something, but not true! I find it harder to mess up an oolong than a black tea these days.

This one was high on my list to pick up at Fauchon, and even though the matching confiture was sold out, the tea was still around. I love almond, orange is pretty great, and it’s an oolong.

They had a small jar of the dry leaf sitting out at the store and it looked kind of like a traditional tieguanyin base… hand curled leaf balls, but dark, olive green color. Turns out I was correct. There was also some unexplained large-diameter stick in my infuser, but whatever. I am normally not huge on traditional (roasted) TGY, but I think it can work really well in some blends, and this seems to be one.

The roasty flavor is a nice complement to the sweet almond. I wouldn’t call this particularly citrusy, but the orange adds a slight brightness and slight sweetness to the blend I think. It’s kind of like a slightly orangey almond cookie, complete with oven-baking. Oh, maybe even more like orange blossom almond cookies, which I love. Anyway, the afteraste is awesome, as it is very almondy, like I just drank some amaretto. I am happy with this one for sure.

I have battled with this tea ever since I brought it back from Paris. Darjeeling! * shakes fist * We are not friends. But maybe we can call an uneasy truce. This time I steeped this tea like it was a green tea, and there is only the barest hints of bitterness on my palate. Most of the flavor is a slightly perfumy raspberry and rose, with the light almond of a macaron underneath. I’m still not in love with this tea, but maybe with a slightly shorter steep time I can actually enjoy it enough to finish it!

I was thinking about this the other day and wondering how it would come out as a cold brew. I’m not fond of darjeelings hot but maybe I would like them ok cold?

The first word I would use to describe this one is powerful. Extremely floral, almost perfumy, with a fruity and almondy undercurrent. I accidentally let this one go longer than I planned, which could be factoring into this, but I also think I will use half the leaf I usually do in the future. I diluted it a great deal and it became more pleasant. I still don’t totally love this one, but I do like the darjeeling much more as a cold brew than I do hot (although I still have to try it at a cooler steep temp). It’s also one of those cold brews that grew on me and I liked it a lot more as I drank more of it.

Trying this again. Even though this tea says that it’s 100% black tea on the website, some of the leaf chunks in my infuser were somewhat greenish, so I steeped it at a slightly lower temp. Not that I think that there is green tea in this, but rather maybe a milder black that needs a lower temp, perhaps a darjeeling?

This tea smells a lot like a macaron… it has a light, baked, cookie-ish aroma, along with raspberry and rose. In short, it smells awesome. The taste still has a very faint sharp bitter note, though. It is definitely lighter than before, so perhaps I just need to go lower in temp even, but it’s odd because it’s kind of unlike a usual oversteeped bitter note. It’s also one of those frustrating things where you can tell the rest of the flavors are awesome, but the base tea seems to be mucking it up. Sigh.

Oh and apparently I can’t read because the base is a darjeeling and it says on the website. I guess this goes to show that, no, I still don’t like darjeelings, even flavored ones. Well maybe if I play around with the steeping parameters I can get it to work for me.

For some reason I thought this would be a good idea to have this afternoon before I figured out if my water pitcher was producing good water or not. This is another one that seems like it had a lot of potential, but possibly tainted by the water. It had a weird bitter note that was very sharp and I’m not certain wasn’t leftover soap aroma from the pitcher. Sigh. But this had nice almond, raspberry and rose notes, and smelled amazing. Will try again, and I have plenty of this one!

OK….honestly, I probably shouldn’t be sampling this right now.
I can’t smell anything. My taste buds aren’t really working very good, but I really wanted to try for something that might be sweet & here it is. This was recieved in a trade from NofarS. There is enough left for me to try it agian, so hopefully I’ll give a better review later.

Appearance-wise, it is a chocolate colored tea, in small clumps that kind of resembles shu. There are pieces of almond & orange peel mixed in as well. And I added stevia, because I couldn’t taste anything.
And it helped…a little. I have a little bit of a sweet taste in my mouth, with the sensation of Shu, overlaid with the bright sensation of orange juice. In between sips these things swell up just a little, so that I’m either slightly tasting them, or imagining it based on the sensations.

This tea (#63) I am having now, and hot. It’s similar to Bali, although Bali has a few other things in the blend I think. Rose and Lychee are just a perfect pair to me. I’ve been making my own rose-lychee black iced tea blend with my Harney teas, and it is quite tasty. I should probably think about drinking this one as a cold brew on occasion too, since it is probably awesome as one.

A lovely flavored green, just the way I like my flavored greens: light, fruity, and floral. To me, lychee is like a fruity rose flavor already, so adding the rose just really ups the floral notes already present. It also means that the two flavors are not quite distinguishable to me… it’s just one big cup of rosey, lychee goodness.

I didn’t rate this one last time I had it but I’m happy to rate it now: delicious! I have to tread lightly with flavored greens these days as so many of them are off-putting for some reason, but not this one. I bet this would be delicious iced as well!

Backlog. I drank this Friday afternoon but was too busy to log it then, and also too busy to really pay close enough attention to it. That along with potentially subpar water means I won’t rate this one because I think I missed some flavors here.

This was on my list of teas I must get. I love rose, I love lychees. There was a sign saying that this was only available in their Paris store, although it appears you can also buy it online, and by “you” I mean those of you that live in Europe.

I have to say that the Fauchon tins are very cool. I thought there was just a sliding lid, but under that there is a second, pushed in lid that makes it very air tight. Nice. Lychees tend to have a rosey flavor on their own, so I guess it isn’t surprising that this mostly tastes like a rose green, although there was a somewhat fruity note. The base teas is a flattened green, likely sencha, although I enjoyed it more than I have enjoyed other senchas recently. All in all a good purchase, and I’m happy to have it.

Wonderful rich marvelous tea.

Finishing up my sample of this, so sad. I love it so much. The combination of apricot and oranges is just so good.

One day I will have this again.

This remains one of the best examples of blood orange flavoring in tea to me. I wish more people did it, or did it right. I just also find it funny that this is an evening in France, when to me orange is so morning.

It was also very tasty with some honey wheat bread for breakfast.

Fixed this one up to match the other Fauchon teas on here now, it was bothering me because I was searching “an evening” and it left out the an. All better!

Steeped this for less time by accident, more focused on studying. I think it worked out better though only being steeped for 3 minutes. It tastes far more like blood orange and apricot now.

Thank you, ToiToi!

When I was in Paris, I was not really SUPER into tea but I knew of Mariage Freres and I honestly think it was a good thing that when I stared at the Fauchon things at La Grande Epicerie de Paris I did not even notice tea because I was entranced by chocolate.

If you have never been to Paris and are obsessed with food, it is basically the coolest place ever. Especially if you want to see things you consider commonplace like marshmallows treated like an exotic luxury.

So of course I love this and I cannot find any way to get Fauchon over here…it’s like when they closed their NYC shop they gave up entirely on North America. And of course I am already in love with this tea.

I was a bit cautious about steeping it for 4 minutes but it was so good. Such a smooth black tea, and the orange flavor tastes so real. I just ate an amazing orange last night. I was surprised at how pink the flesh was, and found out from a friend it’s a cara cara orange! I never had one before, it was sosososo good. I never get oranges unless they are blood oranges, and that one was just mind changing.

This tea definitely tastes like that, I think that might be a combination of the orange and blood orange flavorings. I don’t get the tartness of blood orange but there’s that different sweetness they have. There’s just a little apricot in there too, but it’s mostly orange.

This makes me miss France :(

So, this tea is old. I bought it a couple years ago somewhere in Paris. The ingredients list says it contains green tea but that isn’t really highlighted anywhere else. Interesting.

I am having a weird experience with this tea. It was really fragrant dry, but once steeped I don’t smell any bergamot. It tastes a bit smoky, and quite woody as the description mentions. And I don’t taste any bergamot! I really don’t think I would have any idea this was an EG if it wasn’t labelled as such.

Okay, I decided I wasn’t enjoying this and re-tried, this time steeping longer. About 4 minutes. Now I get a bit of bergamot at the end of the sip but the tea is bitter. Strange! I can’t decide if it’s that this tea has gone a bit off (it’s old but not ancient) or if it is the tea itself. Oh well.

My very favorite flavored black tea (although I prefer it loose).

http://instagram.com/p/X5N4psIc8l/

Thank you ToiToi for sending me this sample! It tastes like Salted Caramel. It’s sweet and slightly salty, with a bright ceylon base that gives it a toffee-like edge. I’ve had a lot of caramel today.

I’d initially forgot this sample at my parents’ when I went off for school but they mailed me a card with an encouraging message and some of the smaller tea bags that I’d left lying around the place. I say this all the time but parents are freaking awesome.

It’s been a while (10 days) since I made a tasting note here. I know this is a long time because Cavocorax changed her profile picture since I was last on. It’s a big deal.

Edit: This tea has a lot of caramel flavour! When I steep this for less time and drink it lukewarm it’s more syrupy and salty-sweet and less like a solid piece of toffee.