Fauchon

I really tried to like this tea. I like all the flavors (almond, orange blossom, orange peel and oolong) in this blend, and all seemed to be complimenting each other in my head, so I thought I could not not like it, but it was really hard to do so. Every time I brew it, it came out too bitter and sharp, it just wasn’t the flavor I was expecting.

I had high hopes for this product and I still want to like it, but I just can’t seem to find the right way to brew it. Orange flower, orange peel, almond, on an oolong base sounds like an exquisite blend and they’re just the aromas I like. However, whenever I brew it, it comes out too bitter and sharp. I tried to be careful with the tempratuer, amount of the tea I put in and everything but it didn’t work out. I’m still hoping I will like this one day.

This cup is thanks to MissB.

I am packaging up some tea to pass along and this is a tea that was requested. There were only about 2-3 tsp of this one so I took a small tsp and brewed up a cup to give it a quick try. This one is okay. It is one is okay. I definitely oversteeped it this time around. The beginning of the sip is fruity, but the end for me is very bitter. If I had it to do again I think I would cold brew this one. It seems like it would bring out the fruit taste.

The first tea to be tried from boychik’s amazing swap package! This tea looked beautiful and smelled even better, so it won out over the other amazing French teas she sent. The oxidized oolong leaves are dark and quite small, and they’re mixed with yellow flower petals and pieces of what look like cacao nibs. Dry scent is super chocolate heaven! It’s somewhere between milk and dark chocolate, so I guess that makes it a lower cocoa percentage dark chocolate. :P I steeped a slightly rounded teaspoon of leaf for 4 minutes at 200 degrees (in my cute new bubble mug, squee!).

Mm, the brewed aroma is still chocolate heaven! There are also some cream and pastry notes there. First off, the flavor of this one is quite light, so I would probably use more leaf the next time I make it. However, the flavor that’s there is amazing! The main star is the chocolate, which actually tastes like chocolate (still a mix of milk and dark). Then there’s the fluffy pastry cream, which pokes its head out midway through the sip and is strong in the aftertaste. In this case, it seems like a mild coconut pastry cream. The overall texture is smooth and there’s a hint of buttery pastry taste that hides in the background. Yum! :)

blech. for whatever reason i didn’t like this one. maybe it’s because it’s that whole fauchon oolong thing. ah well, still good to get a chance to try it. it was just really bland and very…meh

Additional notes: StarFevre had a ridiculously awesome giveaway of teas for some reason, and I’ve been hugely enjoying a few of them so far! THANK YOU STARFEVRE. I really appreciate it. So many good teas! I know they aren’t the freshest, but I really can’t tell so far with the teas I’ve tried. Free beats fresh anyway and I can usually appreciate any cup of tea anyway… unless it’s a really really bad cup of tea. haha. I actually tried this a while ago and now get to revisit this. Still a delicious tea I can enjoy and appley.

Here’s Hoping Traveling Teabox Round #3 – Tea #25
I’m about finished with everything I wanted to sample from this teabox (other than a few I’m removing for later) which means I can focus on the Lewis & Clark teabox that should be arriving tomorrow! Can’t wait!

This one has the color of the cup, the syrup texture, the fragrance coming from the mug and the taste of APPLE CIDER. In all aspects, this one is cider. It doesn’t even seem like a black tea. The second cup was nice as well. I’ll have to try more from Fauchon. They seem to be my favorite French company, other than a few blends from Nina’s Paris.
Steep #1 // few min after boiling // 3 min
Steep #2 // half mug // just boiled // 3 min

Pass the Stash TTB v2.0

The packaging smells like soap. Well the whole box smells like soap- I reckon that it’s that packet of lavender at the bottom. Thankfully this baggie was sealed fairly well and the tea smelt orangey.

I would not have picked this out as an oolong just by looking at it, which goes to show you how well I can identify things on sight (not very well). It feels weird brewing up a flavored tea after pretty much a week of straight teas. I sent the Butiki TTB2 back to Marzipan after work yesterday.

Despite the dry leaves having smelt orangey it was not very apparent in the brewed liquor. The brew was mostly oolong with a touch of orange candy. Not a very strong flavor. I got none of the almond flavor. I think this should be renamed ‘sweet orange oolong’. =) Even then I would say that the flavoring is very light, or maybe very faded.

The oolong base was of medium…? The place were it’s definately not green but I hesitate to call it anything resembling mature. It seems only partially oxidized and brews out with a touch of astringency. It wasn’t exceptional, nor was it the worse thing ever.

Here’s Hoping Traveling Teabox Round #3 – Tea #21
The scent of the dry leaves here almost scared me away. It has kind of a sour scent. But the flavor is SPOT ON pear! Not one of those very green shiny pears that look so fresh but one of those brownish mottled overripe rustic pears. I can definitely mostly taste the pear skin here. Magic! The black tea is tough to describe but pairs (pears) well with it. The second steep didn’t have as much of that pear flavor but the first steep was amazing! I didn’t think the French teas were my thing before, but I can work with this one. Best pear tea I think I’ve tried! (I think I said that about a pear tea I tried from the last round of this teabox.)
Steep #1 // few min after boiling // 3 min
Steep #2 // just boiled // 3 min

One of my scores at Homesense the other day. During the last Fauchon craze, I had steered away from it because I am not really a fan of pears. In general they are not really my favourite fruit or flavour.

I was a bit worried when I opened up the tin and took a whiff. It smelled like that fake pear smell and subsequently taste that you get from pear candy. It did smell a little more genuine than a candy would, but it still made me cringe a little. For 10.00 though, how could I go wrong, and I am sure I will have guests who like pears in the future so why not.

Brewed, it was subtle and crisp. Much nicer than I was expecting. It isn’t my favourite, but it is lovely. The French are always so masterful at blending and smells though, so I should have known better. If you’re thinking of buying it when you see it in your local TJ Maxx chain store, I would recommend it :)

Pass the stash ttb. Was excited when I first saw this one. But as soon as it started steeping, it smelled like rose petals and I know it wouldn’t it tastes like it sounds. I don’t mind rose teas but this doesn’t taste of raspberry or macaroons too me…

For my first cup of the day, I’m digging into the teas I got from Dinosara.

Opening the bag, I was struck by just how floral and perfumey this tea is. Rose was pretty much the only noticeable fragrance and it was powerful. This is an unflattering comparison, but it really reminded me of the air freshener my grandma always had in her bathroom when I was a kid. The dry leaf is quite pretty with the pink peppercorn scattered throughout.

The liquor is a clear, reddish brown, and has the same fragrance as the dry leaf.

Steeped for three minutes, it’s flavourful but light. There’s a touch of bitterness, a touch of fruitiness (that I honestly couldn’t identify as raspberry) and lots and lots of rose flavour. The mouth feel is pretty smooth, though a bit of astringency builds up as I sip.

This is a pleasant tea for sure, but I wish it tasted more like its inspiration.

I didn’t realize that the base tea was a Darjeeling when I made this, so I’ll have to give it a shot again, with more Darjeeling specific steeping parameters.

Edit: Bah! I had a few cold drops of this left in a tiny cup that I was using to sample it, and I sipped those down before starting on my next tea. There were all the raspberry and pastry notes, even some coconut, that I just couldn’t detect at all in my cup! So they’re there, but now to figure out how to draw them out in a full cup.

Sipping down this small sample I pulled from a traveling box. I’m so glad to have tried this and really hope to cross paths with it again. It is such an odd sweet and savory mix! When unsweetened, the thyme really takes center stage with the peach hiding in the background. When I add a little sweetener, the peach comes out a bit more. I would love to make a peach pie with a little thyme and see if it turns out as yummy as this tea! The thyme lingers in the aftertaste. I’m finding this tea very warm and comforting. So long little tea! Hope we meet again!

This is really strange! I love the unexpected combination of sweet and savory. It reminds me of an ice cream flavor from a local made ice cream company, Lick, which was peach and rosemary. The two went really well together, surprisingly so and I think the same goes for this tea too. The scent of thyme is dominant, but lets the peach come through a bit in the sip. I think it is even better with a bit of sugar to round out the peach flavor. I added a little soy milk to see what would happen and I think it kind of kills the flavors. The thyme is muted and the peach is only present in the aftertaste. Should have stuck with just sugar.
This is a really creative and unusual blend! I like it!

This is from the TTTTB 2.0. I’ve had a lot of caffeine this a.m. and decided I needed to back off a little. This is an oolong so there is some caffeine but not as much as Chocolate Rocket and My Morning Mate (This mornings caffeine of choice). I’ve got most of my ‘chores’ and exercising done ( walked 4.5 miles).

The tea has a mild orange and almond flavor. It’s quite soothing. It’s not one I personally would buy but I certainly would enjoy a cup of this occasionally. I’m enjoying drinking it while the kitchen floor dries and watching the most recent Doctor Who episode.

Pass the Stash 2.0

I don’t drink a lot of oolongs so I can’t say much about the oolong part of this tea. It was a pleasant orange and almond flavor with a nice aftertaste. But it was a bit weak in the flavor department. They said 1+ tsp per 8 oz. but maybe it needed more. I have more so I’ll try it again in a couple days.

PTS TTB

Well I was enjoying this tea! That was until I ate a giant pumpkin shaped marshmallow. After that the tea tasted a little dull. Halloween is one of my other obsessions/loves and I go a little crazy this time of year with all the limited edition pumpkin foods, or in this case just pumpkin shaped.

Basil in teas is sort of a trendy things right now, but this is the first blend I’ve tried that has thyme in it. I grow my own thyme and cook with it a fair bit so it’s easy enough the recognize in the scent and flavour. Honestly they should just call this tea ‘Straight-up Thyme Tea’ as it’s the dominant flavour in this tea by far. There’s maybe a little bit of fruitiness but it’s very subtle.

Mostly when I think of winter-themed teas I think of spices like cinnamon and clove or oranges. This tea goes a completely different route with its creamy lemon flavour that reminds me so much of some lemon-flavoured macarons that I bought recently. A very light and elegant blend.

Aw, this is my last Fauchon sample from Dinosara… Sad day! I put off trying this tea yesterday because dry, it smells insanely floral. The leaf itself is mostly small black tea leaves with quite a few rose petals mixed in. Dry scent is powerful rose with a sweetness that reminds me of powdered sugar or candy. I brewed for 3 minutes at 200 degrees.

I wasn’t very excited to try this one, but the aroma started to get me there. It’s mostly vanilla, surprisingly! There is also some floral there and a bit of citrus. Unfortunately for me, that strong vanilla aroma doesn’t really carry over to the taste side. The beginning of the sip is mostly citrus with a bit of vanilla in there, while the middle and end are dominated by the rose flavor (blegh). Aww, I was so excited too… :(

Work – 11:00 AM

Welp, I definitely steeped this one a bit longer than I’d intended. I was having a work-related chat with a coworker and (of course) forgot about it. Bless its little heart, it’s not even bitter despite being so abused. Gotta love French black teas, they’re often quite difficult to ruin.

That being said, this one is so not for me. I would think it would be lovely based on the description (fruity with apricot & citrus). Unfortunately, the predominant flavor is rose. And rose and I are not the best of friends, it’s one of a few floral notes that I genuinely can’t stand.

So this one will go into the “go live with someone else who will appreciate you more” pile. No hard feelings, Fauchon, you and I are just generally not meant to be! I won’t hold it against you with a rating.

I only have two Fauchon teas from Dinosara left to try, and this one smelled much less floral than the other choice, so I decided to have it. There are many flower petals mixed in with the small black tea leaves, which is somewhat discouraging, but luckily it smells more like some kind of citrus candy. I’m finding that all of these Fauchon teas have that odd candylike smell that I can’t quite put my finger on, maybe powdered sugar or something? I guess it must be a side effect of their flavorings.

Brewed, the tea still has that same candy smell, and it’s mildly citrus. I can definitely taste orange, although it seems a bit peppier than a normal orange. After reading the description for it, I can say it’s probably the blood orange that adds that extra intensity. The apricot is there too, but it’s quite mild and is overshadowed a bit by the citrus. Overall, still a nice enough orange black tea with (hooray) no floral! :)

Another sample from Dinosara. The dry leaf looks like sencha – long, flat-steamed leaves. The dry scent is raspberry candy with a hint of citrus yumminess. I did a 3 minute steep at 175 degrees.

The brewed tea itself smells quite vegetal but sweet from the vanilla. Yum, I really like this one. The main flavor I get is a lovely combination of the grapefruit and raspberry, fresh and fruity with a little bit of tartness. The vanilla comes in more toward the end of the sip, and that’s when I can taste the lovely vegetal green tea base the most. I can see this being delightful with a bit of sugar, but I’m trying not to add sugar to any of my teas lately. It would also make a lovely iced tea, I’m sure! :)