Le Palais des Thes

Thank you Ysaurella, for another lovely tea!

This was one of my 2 bubble bath teas this evening, & it is quite nice! I enjoy the mellow smokiness of Keemun, & the fruity & floral flavors with it were very nicely balanced.

2nd cup today. Very delicate, strong vegetal scent, with a definite jasmine aftertaste and a slightly milky taste. A tea with a creamy body that brews (gongfu style) to a very light yellow brew

This tea came in my gift set from Palais de Thes – I could not find it on the American site, only on the British one. Is the name too risque for us yanks?

In any case my taste buds are off today so I’m not going to rate this one for now. I started taking MSM which is working wonders for my foot pain but has also given me something of a dry mouth this morning, and I might be getting a cold which isn’t helping either. This is a nice blend of green and black tea along with a very strong fruity element. This one smells great in the tube. I don’t have much experience with green and black blends but so far I am really liking it. The fruit seems good in this blend, it’s refreshing but not tart.

I hope to post a better review if and when I am feeling more normal! :)

Let’s say first that the original one, the green The du Hammam, is very good, but a more sensitive one. You will allways been tempted to push temperature or steeping time to extract more of that dates flavour, which are good. But it’s a green tea, so… well, sometimes you get the dates flavour PLUS biterness. It’s not easy to obtain the good balance between biterness (just a little bit) and dates flavour). But when you suceed, the tea is just excellent.
I agree with LatteTeaDah that the spicy and smoky flavours of the keemun is a good thing and it’s certainly a plus, comparing to the green version. But I was enjoying the dates flavour and I have to confess that now I know that I miss them here.
What to say? I mean, ok, rhubarb is never bad, but here I don’t think we can feel it fully, as we can do it in their La Montagne Bleue tea (LatteTeaDah, have you tried it?). So, for me replacing dates by rhubarb was a loss.

The result is quite pleasant anyway, as any keemun-based tea shall be.

I am doing a spring cleaning of tea and tea samples, trying to get some nearly empty tins emptied and revisiting swaps and samples. There was enough of this to make a bit for a tea follow-up to dinner.

The aroma of this tea makes my eyes roll back in my head. Ah, wonderful jasmine – not perfume-y, soapy jasmine. The steeped tea is a bold deep yellow, not a light lemony yellow like this morning’s Jaune Lemon. It leans a bit toward orange.

The tea base has a decided GOOD astringency, clearing the palate and freshening the breath. There is no bitterness. The jasmine is not overbearing but quite nice. This reminds me a little of Teavivre’s Chun Mee and as I near the end of the pot I feel like I am even getting a bit of that sweet plum aftertaste, but a bit lighter than in Chun Mee.

Delicious, and many thanks to SimplyJenW for sending it.

I am having a lovely quiet Sunday morning as hubby and the girls have gone hiking and I stayed behind to cook for my son who is coming for a visit today! This is the perfect time for an “all day” tetsubin, something I really look forward to but don’t do often enough!

I wanted to try something new and came across this lovely sample from SimplyJenW.

As soon as the water hit the leaves, an exquisite jasmine frangance filled the air. I steeped for three minutes and tried a cup of full strength tea. The green is not bitter, it is a tiny tad astringent but in a good way and you really have to look for it, and the jasmine is very natural and delicate – not soapy at all.

Because the tetsubin is large, I like to resteep immediately and add it to the first steep to make a nice mix of the two for drinking most of the day. It sits on a warmer so it stays a good temp for drinking for a long time.

This is a delicious treat! I am glad I got to try another jasmine green since I didn’t like the first one I ever tried, and since then have mostly had black jasmine teas.

Thank you, Jen!

Very fruited green tea, exactly the kind I like. Not as good as Marco Polo, but still worth tasting it.

Great tea I’m drinking at work.

Backlog from yesterday: I’m finding all the tea that I got from Le Palais de Thes blends tend to taste very, very similiar. It’s all overwhelmingly perfume-y with generic bases. Also, I find that some of their descriptions of flavors are different on the packaging than they are on their website, which I find disconcerting. I’m a stickler for accuracy in description since I’m allergic to some things.

I cold-brewed the rest of what I had of this overnight. Cold-steeping this cut down on the perfume elements and it was much more pleasant, especially the rose. The base is still very generically black with a little sencha. There is also some fruity elements: The sample package says papaya, the internet description says mango… I’m leaning more toward papaya.

An ok tea, but I’ve definitely had better fruity AND better floral teas.

This tea is kind of overwhelmed by a soapy floral cherry and rose petal taste. It’s the first thing I smell and the first thing I taste. I’ve been eating a ton of cherries since yesterday, so the difference in flavor between the real cherries and soapy fragrance is even more apparent than it would have been.

I added a little raw alfalfa honey in after the first few sips and it helps tone down the cherryand brings out the base and papaya. Tastes like a black base although it is supposed to be a blend. Smooth and not bitter or astringent, so that is nice.

An Earl Grey rooibos.
Bergamot note with honey rooibos touch is simply excellent.
Probably a good one to start with rooibos.

ALMOST finished infusing. I hate to say it but it’s UNimpressive thus far – not much to look at or smell.

I will give credit where credit is due – the color – post-infusion is beautiful. It’s like a copper color or brandy-type color. Very nice.

The flavor isn’t very impressive either. It’s not bad but not memorable in any way either. It’s your stereotypical rooibos. I can’t taste much else.

So-so

I somehow forgot to log this the day I had the first sample. It was yummy. But I guess I was busy at work and forgot about it.

This steep is a sipdown from my sample from sil I got recently. Anyhow, I have had a headache off and on since yesterday afternoon and slept in a bit. Snuggled with the hubby a bit too. So I like a nice strong black when I have a headache, and usually gravitate to a straight black. Since hubby tends to prefer straight black with milk and sugar over super frou frou teas, I usually make some for both of us. I was going to make some Keemun from Red Blossom that also came in my sample box, and he said fine to, but then I said, “or I can do this black one with toffee, do you want to share that?” and of course he said yes. I know my man and his caramel toffee sweet tooth, so I made this up for us both, and used a large spoonful of sweetened condensed milk (still out of regular milk) each. So we each have a super creamy and sweet black tea with a touch of toffee in there, which is comforting. I just want to gulp this down.

I bet if I had used the dark chocolate milk in here, he would have swooned. Chocolate and toffee? :P

This is a pretty good tea, and tells me that I need some kind of maple/caramel/toffee type of black tea in my rotation. I’m gonna look on the ground first, before looking to the interwebz for some. But this is good, so I will keep it in mind.

Thank you so much for these teas, Dinosara! Always appreciated. This is stored in what looks like a little tin vial with a lid that screws on. I loved the idea of this blend but the flavor doesn’t seem like it follows though. There is something a bit unnatural about it — not sure what. It kind of seems like a potpourri to me, but it isn’t terrible tasting. The cinnamon has a bit of heat to it. It tastes a bit like raisins to me! I like it but I don’t love it. It’s a puzzle trying to figure out the flavors with this one though.

Looks like today is going to be a heating pad and icepack kind of day. Typical life of being in brazilian jiujitsu, something is always hurting. Today? shoulder and knee. Totally worth it though, I almost caught a purple belt in a shoulder lock during sparing. Almost.

Drinking this tea iced. This time, it came out a little better. There’s a orange candy tang right at the end, but rest of the cup is very grassy. Meh. Much better hot, but I didn’t trust myself to carry an icepack, tea pot, tea cup and crackers upstairs. Maybe I should cold steep this..

Woot! I won this tea off the FoodNetwork blog! What really sucked was it came right before I left on vacation – so it was sitting on my table, unloved, until I got back. Well, Owly loved it, he nested in the massive amounts of tissue paper!

Overall, quite a high quality tea. Fresh green tea, big leaf with attractive orange chunks and petal curls. The flavor has a great balance of orange and grassy green tea with no tart or bitterness. The orange has a slight tang and candy flavor to it, so no sweetener needed. The green tea also had a silky texture to it.

Iced, not so great so far. It came out very grassy. I think I’ll need to play with this tea some more if I want a better iced tea, however it is a solid hot cup.

Full review on my blog, The Oolong Owl http://oolongowl.wordpress.com/2013/06/18/la-fleur-d-oranger-from-le-palais-des-thes-tea-review/
+ vacation photos and new owl!