Le Palais des Thes

You know what’s weird? How I generally enjoy a cup brewed Western style more than several cup brewed Gong Fu, and yet with certain sorts of tea, I have taken to thinking in terms of Gong Fu when it comes to writing about them on Steepster. It’s a weird situation where it’s more fun to brew this way, but I prefer the result of the other way. As Dr Right was interested in having some too and I didn’t really want to skip every other steep when writing about it, I ended up in an even weirder situation where I made the same tea in two different pots in two different ways at the same time.

This one was shared with me a while ago by Ssajami. The last time I had a tea of this type I felt it was like drinking a liquid courgette, so I was curious to see if that was something unique to that one or if I could reproduce something similar in others of the same type. Up until very recently I associated this type of tea primarily with walnuts, so I don’t know where all these gourds has suddenly come from.

1. The aroma is very floral and there something almost syrup-y sweet lurking underneath the surface of it too. That floralness, though, that’s almost too much for me. It’s like a flower shop. Too much. Too strong. Almost sickening. It reminds me of a bouquet of flowers I got once where I had to air out the living room really well because they were so strong that they were stinking up the place.

It develops really really quickly though, and before I’ve even got so far as to take a sip it has already turned away from the extreme floralness and into something which reminds me most of all of gherkins. It’s even slightly dill-y. Now, I really enjoy gherkins, but tea is not something I particularly wish to find the association to them in.

It does, however, solve the mystery of how someone got the thought of flavouring tea with cucumber. I have actually tried a cucumber flavoured white tea once. It was vile.

The flavour is still quite floral, really, but the floralness mainly shows up in the aftertaste. The first bit of the sip is something smooth and slippery and very wet. You know how something which has an astringent note can taste dry? Well, this is definitely not astringent, but it’s not really the normal smoothness of non-astringency either. It just feels wetter than usual. It’s really the only way I can describe it. I know it sounds ridiculous. It’s not giving me anything in way of an actual flavour though, not until the floral bits set in. It’s just warm water, which is wet and then it’s floral.

2. The aroma this time is still very floral but less intensely so. There doesn’t seem to be any gherkins or anything of that family around this time. There is a fair bit of dill after it has developed a bit, but it doesn’t have those other details that makes me think of pickled cucurbitaceae of any sort.

The flavour is all floralness all the way. Rather too much so for me, and I feel like I’m drinking perfume. With a touch of dill in it.

Dill perfume… I… erm, no. I find myself bizarrely wanting the gherkins back. Let’s just skip straight ahead here.

3. Still floral on the aroma and still dill-y. I’m getting rather tired of these as none of them are smells that I particularly enjoy.

The flavour is exactly the same as the second round, so I’m just going to skip it.

4. No it’s still the same as before. I’m officially throwing in the (tea)towel.

For comparison, I snuck into Dr. Right’s room and sipped a bit of his western style brewed cup. He laughed heartily at how that too reminded me of gherkins in the aroma. The flavour wasn’t much though. It was somehow less intense than I had expected and impossible for me to really decipher. It had the same ‘wetness’ to it though.

For all his laughing he eventually admitted that he could kind of see where I was coming from with those gherkins.

ETA: Oh and additionally, I made myself a teatra.de account yesterday, so feel free to look me up if you like. I’m Angrboda there also and use the same icon, so I shouldn’t be difficult to find. I have no idea what to do with it though; it was a whim.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to divest myself of these Palais de Thes samples so yesterday I cold brewed this in my Teavana tea maker for 12+ hours (don’t judge – it was a gift, lol)

This has really brought out the flowery, perfumey notes of this tea. I am drinking it over ice and it is tasting pretty soapy. Kind of arguing with myself about whether I should dump it out, but will probably suffer through it and just finish it.

Still working my way through the Le Palais de Thes gift set…

This smells slightly fruity in the tube and it appears to be a Chinese green tea with a few flower petals. I steeped my sample at 180 F for around 2 minutes. It’s an earthy and mellow tea with a light peach and flower flavor. I do detect a bit of rose in here but it is very mild. This is certainly nice but I don’t think I need to purchase a larger size, which has been my impression with most of their flavored teas thus far. I’m not sure what else to say about it since it didn’t make a big impression on me. I bet this would make a nice iced tea.

Truthfully I’m not a big fan of Earl Grey type teas and this one is not an exception, but it came in my Palais de Thes gift set. You should probably take this review with a grain of salt because it comes from someone who is already biased. I found the bergamot to be very strong and makes the black tea base kind of bitter and soapy tasting. I added soymilk and that made it better but this is not something I would purchase. My boyfriend, who likes E.G., thought this was good.

Thé coréen à recommander et à faire essayer sans sucre à ceux qui ne connaissent pas le thé.
Thé très gourmand , très long en bouche
Note: chocolat, lacté, vanillé, boisé et fruits compotés
Saveur: sucré
Texture: épais
Prix : 65€/100g mais on peut en boutique en demander 50g.

Another sample from Palais de Thes… this is an oolong and it smells very fruity in the tube. I decided to steep it according to their instructions which was 5-7 minutes at 205 F. At that amount of time my cup is much darker than the one which appears on their website. I may try to cut the steeping time down with the rest of this sample.

Overall, the flavor is okay but it’s complicated. I am definitely getting fruity, I sense some stone fruit flavors here that I quite like. I almost wonder if this tea is scented in some way though because it is kinda perfumey, maybe that’s the flowers. I could really do without the floral element in this tea. I do like some floral teas but not others yeah, I’m picky like that. :) Sometimes I think one flavor element in a tea is really enough.

This is not a great morning tea for me, I would probably prefer something like this in the afternoon. It’s ok but not something I would purchase right now. They have a couple of other oolong blends, one is a tropical and one is a straight up fruit blend, those look better to me.

Another flavored green from my Palias de Thes gift set…

I steeped this at 3 minutes at 170 F and found it to be quite unremarkable so it will be hard for me to review this one. :) The base of this green tea is fairly mild and slightly vegetal, a bit nutty. The cherry element here is fairly light and lends a bit of sweetness along with a slightly tart element. I have to add I’ve tried a few cherry green teas in the last year and it’s been difficult for me to find one I really think is good! They all end up reminding me of cough syrup. I want something dark and luscious like a bing cherry. Maybe there’s a cherry black tea out there for me?

I think I’ll have to try cold brewing the rest of this sample…

Very sweet and balanced Japanese green tea.

hmm. I really wasn’t sure what I was going to think about a green tea flavored with these spices (cardamom and clove) and citrus but I actually loved this one! You should know I am a cardamom fiend, however so be warned! That is probably the strongest element in this tea followed by the orange and a hint of clove. I’m not sure what the base of this tea is, but mingled in this blend it is very rich, earthy and mellow. I would definitely be wanting to purchase this, but it’s too bad you can only get it in 100g bags…

I guess this is a green chai of sorts… impressive and my favorite of the flavored teas so far from Le Palais de Thes.

note: also re-steeps well

Oh hello all! It’s been ages since I posted, hasn’t it? I’ve been distracted lately. Lego Harry Potter apparently deeply addictive and I’ve been playing it at almost ever chance I’ve had for the last two weeks or so. Apart from just telling the HP story, there are all these other little goals of special things to collect in the game and it’s knocking my OCD into overdrive. Collect ALL THE THINGS!!!!

I’ve had this one a few times already, and I initially ordered it because it’s a blend with vanilla in it. Vanilla and orange peels and apparently possibly a bit of red fruits. From the description I honestly can’t work out if there is red fruits flavouring added as well, or if that’s naturally occurring note in the blend.

Whatever it is, though, it doesn’t matter because I haven’t really been able to identify it anyway.

But yes, vanilla blend. It’s my vanilla obsession, still going strong. The boyfriend realised the other day exactly how many vanilla teas I’ve got currently, and the mocking would take no end. It didn’t help when I pointed out the three or for that he had missed or were blends with vanilla in them. I had a swap arrive from NinaVampi the other day and while he has seen it, he luckily for me haven’t made the connection yet. Three more vanilla teas! :D

I can’t help it, I’m searching for the perfect vanilla, aren’t I?!

It’s fun, actually, obsessing about a specific flavour like that.

Anyway, this one. Vanilla. Yes. Check. I wasn’t too interested in the orange peel aspect to be honest. Citrus flavouring is one of those flavours that have to be done just so in order to be really good, otherwise they’re just meh. Not bad, mind. Just… not interesting. I also couldn’t quite imagine what orange peels and vanilla would be like in combination.

But vanilla. So I bought it.

I can now report that orange peel and vanilla work rather nicely together in this one. The base black seems to be fairly strong, probably a Kenya, I expect. LPdT has this label coding for their teas which tells of region of origin and this pouch has the African label on it, which is what I’m basing my Kenya assumption on. It’s a good choice, I think. I find that a tea has to be at least medium strong, preferably stronger, in order to successfully carry citrus flavouring, especially if it’s citrus peels.

So the base and the citrus peels are prominent here. The vanilla is not obvious at first. But when you’ve had a few sips, you suddenly discover it and wonder how you didn’t see it before. Like camouflage. You see a picture of some mottled trees or something, and somewhere in there you know there is a moth, but you have to search for it. And once you found it, it’s totally easy to see it’s there. That’s the vanilla here. Like a fog creeping in on the flavour, slowly but surely, adding more and more to the vanilla experience. It’s everywhere, but near the bottom of the flavour in a sort of attempt at discretion, happy to let the citrus run the show.

I quite like vanilla in blends like this. Near the bottom and just adding a thick and creamy substance to an otherwise fruity flavour. I find that the vanilla in the Late Summer blend from ACP work much the same way, only that blend is a lot brighter than this one. This one seems heavier and darker. If tea had age groups this one would probably be late middle aged and starting to get somewhat curmudgeonly. (In comparison, the aforementioned Late Summer blend is somewhere in the late twenties or thirties)

And it’s funny really, that I find the vanilla is best in blends this way, because that’s not at all how I want it in a straight vanilla flavoured tea. Then I want much more power, brightness and sparkle on the vanilla.

This was a pretty good choice. I might buy it again sometime, but I’m not sure I really super-urgently need to once I’m through the pouch.

I really enjoyed this one, sometimes flavored green teas can be iffy because the flavoring has a tendency to overpower the tea. I’m pretty sure this is a Chinese green tea of some type, lovely sweet flowery aroma. The flavor is very delicate and reminds me a little bit of pears and honeydew melon, although the description on the website says watermelon, kiwi and peach. A bit of sweetness in the finish but not nauseatingly so. Uplifting in a gentle sort of way. I don’t tend to keep a lot of flavored green teas around and I would certainly consider this one, but it would take me forever to go through a 100g bag of this.

Now that I’m feeling a bit energized I need to get of the house for a while before I go stir crazy!

As soon as I opened the little sample tube to smell this I thought “Oh, the holidays!”

So I steeped this for 4 minutes at around 205 F. When I inspected the wet leaf I could see bits of cloves and orange rind in it. I think there might be some cinnamon in this blend too. One of the other tasters remarked on not liking Le Palais des Thes black tea base, but this tea is so highly spiced that I’m having a hard time finding it!

Overall, I thought it was okay, if you don’t mind the taste of a spicy Christmas tea but I doubt I would go out of my way to find this. Then again, I am not usually craving orange spice tea either. I’m having mine with soymilk this morning and am finding it a wee bit strong, might cut back on the steeping time by one minute the next time I have this.

Recently I got myself a gift set from Le Palais des Thes and I was very excited when it arrived. It comes in a box with a full color book and aluminum tins of their different flavored teas. I was initially a little bit miffed after realizing I was only going to get two mugs of tea out of each sample, but that’s ok. I will definitely recycle or reuse these tins for something else, spices perhaps…

I don’t always like vanilla tea because the vanilla can get very artificial tasting but this is very nice and subtle. The green tea is a flavored sencha which I’m really enjoying. I might have steeped this a little long but it seems to be fine. It’s a very smooth taste with a bit of vegetal and also some lingering nuttiness. A bit of astringency in the finish as I was expecting. I don’t know if I will purchase a large size but it definitely is one of the nicer flavored greens I’ve tried. I like the fact that the flavoring is very mild & it blends well with the tea.

20 minutes later: this sencha is not sitting too well with my stomach, perhaps oversteeping was a bad idea. :(

This is one of my favorite Ceylon teas of all times, so rich and chocolat-ey! I am enjoying it on this cool, foggy morning.

Yesterday I went to a writing/meditation workshop and some interesting things came out of that, overall a very positive experience!

I’ve already posted about it before but this stuff is amazing and will be my raison d’être for a new Le Palais de Thes order, focusing on straight teas I think…

The morning cuppa. I hope it brings me out of my sleepyhead state of mind this morning, but no tea really motivates me to go to work. :) Very tasty ceylon – see previous notes.

My afternoon pick me up. Already tastes like caramel and chocolate without any flavor in it. I really wish I had bought more plain teas from them instead of that silly sampler of flavored teas. :)

see my previous notes. love it.

This is a black tea from Sri Lanka and the description on the website is thus:

A gorgeous, tippy tea that produces a mellow, amber-colored and very flowery liquor. One of the best teas from the Nuwara Eliya district.

I steeped this at around 4 minutes at 205 F and am loving it! It has beautiful small and dark leaves. The aroma of the tea is flowery but the flavors are luscious… I am getting molasses, honey and fruit. This has a slight bit of pungency in the finish which is a bit harsh but that might be tempered by steeping with a bit less time. I took off a few points in my rating for that but otherwise it’s so close to perfection.

This is definitely one of the best ceylons I’ve ever had – very, very good!

This one was had for the first time under circumstances that didn’t really lend themselves very well to analysing the flavour profile.

It did, however, go extraordinarily well with home-made crumpets on a sunday afternoon.

(Also, am not making crumpets again any time soon. Took all damn day!)

Dear those with whom I have shared AC Perchs’ raspberry oolong

You may wish to have a closer look at this one. Due to the horrible shipping costs caused by Danish post non-service, many of you have been saddened that the ACP was unavailable to you. I suspect this one would be a good alternative, although I haven’t yet done any proper sort of comparison between the two. Still, many, if not most, of you loved the ACP and based on that, I think you would really like this one too.

Finally, the lychee. I can see why some people think lychee has a chemical sort of smell, and maybe it’s one of those things where, in order to fully enjoy lychee flavoured things, one needs to be familiar with the flavour of actual lychees.

I happen to think they’re very tasty, but they’re a rare guest around these parts and often expensive.

This tea, I think, captures the lychee flavour very accurately, and it does so without overpowering the tea base which is even better. It’s lychee-y and sweet, and cteresa if you haven’t already tried this one, I think it would be right up your alley.

Suddenly we now have a large chunk of this here wedding malarky sorted satisfactoraly. We had a meeting with the restaurant this morning and the battle plan for the day has taken shape. Now all we actually need is just invitations and our own outfits.

This totally calls for celebratory tea. I’m also celebrating with some chocolate cake so I chose a fruity one that might go well with it.

What I have actually ended up with, though is a rather curious blend, because it wasn’t until after I had almost poured a full cup and the contents of the pot suddenly didn’t fit, which it usually does, that I realised that I had about a third cup left from this morning. That was The du Tigres (or whatever. In this house goes by the name of Tigger Tea), also from LPdT. That one is smoky.

I think I’m about to discover what a flavoured Lapsang Souchong might be like. (Seriously, have either of you ever seen that? And I mean flavoured, not just blended into something flavoured. I would seriously like to know what that could result in)

My accidental blend of strawberry black and some cold half-day old Tigger Tea is actually surprisingly good. It doesn’t hurt that I’ve really managed to nail the strawberry on this pot. So it’s very strawberry-like and then I get some of the smoke coming in on top and near the end of the sip.

It sounds bizarre, I know, but it actually strikes me as a really interesting flavour. It makes me actually want to try and experiment a bit with smoky tea and fruit flavoured tea. Just the regular LS, though. The Jin Jun Mei that Spoonvonstrup sent me is obviously way too valuable for that sort of fooling about, and the Tigger Tea is getting a little low and the boyfriend has become very fond of it.

It seems like strawberry is a difficult flavour to get in a black tea. Often I find it’s more a flavour of strawberry leaf rather than the flavour of the actual fruit. Strawberry flavoured things, like sweets and such, also often have a really synthetic flavour to them, so I’m not really surprised that it’s difficult. Strawberry just seems to be a very flighty and finicky flavour in itself, and as I’m sitting here typing it’s actually difficult for me to drudge up a memory of what an actual real strawberry actually tastes like.

This is odd, really, because strawberry is such a popular flavour to add to things.

This tea is really no different. It has dried strawberry leaf in, and that is really the primary flavouring note that I get. I can’t say that surprises me because I was sort of expecting it, but I do wish I could find one that actually tastes like berries and not so much like the leaf.

That said, strawberry leaf is also a rather pleasant flavour in tea, so I wouldn’t say it was a loss or a disappointment.

The boyfriend enjoys black fruits, like blackberry and the like, so I bought this one specifically with him in mind. I thought it was have a more forest fruit-y sort of quality but I find it’s primarily blackberry, and that it tastes very similar to the blackberry flavoured one from AC Perch’s that we’ve already got some 200g of.

So while this one is very tasty indeed, it’s not one I feel the need to keep in stock. I have an easier way to get something very similar.

Gosh, that oolong took all day! Following these amateur gong-fu sessions, I almost always find myself wanting a break with something rather more plebeian. Something that makes the purists shudder. Something a little more down to earth and every-day like.

Something flavoured.

And if it’s sweets flavoured, even better.

Cheers, Steepsterites.