Le Palais des Thes

A sample of cheaper sencha from Le palais des thes. Wonerful lightness, fresh aroma and vividly green colour. The underlying nutty aromas made me lie down on the floor with empty upside – down cup on my nose, just smelling what is left in the cup.

A decent pu erh. The first cup was a bit boring, since I steeped my 4 g sample for only a mnute. The second cup was somewhere between sweet and savoury tastes, with only a hint of earthiness. Quite “light” for a pu erh. It would work well as an everyday drink, I suppose.

Tea #1 from Considering a new TTB

When I pulled this from the TTB I knew this was the tea I wanted to start with, I’ve been looking for a good Earl Grey Green and just so happen to love Mao Feng. I’m impressed with this tea, it manages to have the perfect balance of bergamot and green tea for my tastes. The bergamot is strong, but not overwhelming, letting the sweet grassy notes of the green base peak through. It’s a nice change of pace from the classic earl grey blends I typically enjoy.

This tea will not be continuing on.

Green Darjeeling. Now that’s something you don’t see every day.
I was given a sample of this tea when I was browsing trough tea collection of my local Palais des Thés shop. (Of course, I went there just to look but bought some Tie Guan Yin anyway). That was few days ago.
So today I was in the mood for something green and decided to try this one. Dry leaves had a lovely rich and somehow sweet aroma. They were also weirdly dark in color and had some hay straws here and there.
After steeping for little less than a minute in my lovely clay kyusu I poured myself a cup of beautifully yellow liquid with woody and slightly “toasted” aroma. Too bad that the taste was disappointing. It was slightly sweet at first, but then unusually bitter and mouth – drying. I thought I may have used too hot water, so with second infusion I was more careful. But the unpleasant itter taste didn’t go away. For the third infusion, I reduced the water temperature even more. And this time, it was much better. It was smoother, still slightly bitter, but much sweeter. Maybe I screwed up the first two steepings with too hot water.
All in all, I would say that this is an above average tea. Lovely aromas and appearance, but gets bitter quickly and leaves very little room for mistakes.

Another sipdown from my Sil collection.
When I drank this before, I sweetened it, but today I drank it straight up, nothing added but water. I know that if it was sweetened, the english toffee flavor would be more present, but I enjoyed the dark unsweet quality of it today. It reminded me of some kind of pipe tobacco aroma almost, a sweet vanilla kind of pipe tobacco, not burning, but in the pouch.
399 teas to go!
(no, I don’t have fantasies of actually polishing off ALL of my teas, but little terri likes the countdown :)

From Sil, I served this to a student & her mother. They loved it. I feel that it tasted fake.
That’s pretty much all I have to say.

Reading PdT’s own description of this tea, it comes off as something very complex. It’s certainly very present scent wise – almost to a take-over-the-room level, but the suggested complexity is nowhere to be found.

I can’t really do my usual notes-of-this, or notes-of-that, because there’s just one main note – a somewhat flat, slightly smoky houjicha – that’s what the body of this tea amounts to for me. In the company’s flavour profile, this is described as something with a ‘medium length’ taste, and I feel I need to try a short length one – that would be a brief tongue tip taste experience, and then nothing else. This tea barely has any discernible aftertaste – all I get is a vaguely peppery note as I swallow.

This is ideal for someone looking for a very mellow roasty tea, whereas I tend to prefer the over-the-top roasty blends. Sorry, PdT, but this did nothing to convince me that all the criticism raised against your unflavoured teas is unjustified.

[Sample gifted by my sweet friend T, October 2013.]