Nina's Paris

Holy oranges, Batman! No chocolate or cream in this hot cup if tea. Just orange, orange, and more orange. Not that that’s bad but it’s definitely different than all the other cups I have had. Oh, and this is a sipdown. Thanks Cavocorax for sending this my way :)

So I never really liked chocolate and orange which is why I passed on asking for a sample of this while I was at Nina’s. However, the combination of positive reviews and the fact that I enjoyed Three Friends piqued my interest enough that I asked Cavocorax for a sample. Now that I have tried it for myself, I think I agree with Cavo in saying this is the best chocolate orange tea out there. Really. It is good. Very good. Smooth, creamy, chocolatey and with a bright citrus flavor. Yum! Thank you Cavo!!

Oddly enough I got no strawberries out of this, only apples.

I don’t like apple flavouring very much, so I didn’t love this. Perhaps my tastebuds are messed up.

I also cannot recall where I got this! Courtney perhaps??

Happy to have tried it though!

Weird, apple.

Received samples of this from Nina’s Tea and Courtney.

I checked Steepster ahead of time to determine the best temperature, rather, to see what everyone else did. I went with boiling for 2-3 min.

I found this pretty astringent. Not as smooth nor as creamy as I’d hoped, I found the strawberry taste seemed a bit artificial to me, but the main issue was the bitterness. Perhaps at a lesser temperature it would be softer and creamier, but as I prepared it, this tea was not particularly angelic!

Happy to have tried it out, thanks to Nina’s and Courtney!

I received a surprise package from JustJames quite some time ago, and I’ve been remiss in posting any notes on the lovely tea’s that were generously sent my way. Partly because I’ve been turning away from flavoured tea’s in favour of straight up tea’s. But once in a while I indulge and reach for flavoured.

On opening the sample packet I could immediately detect the sweetness and vanilla. I used to be fanatical about vanilla tea’s, and this just reawakened my love for all things vanilla.

Sweet, delicious caramel and vanilla. Mmmm.

Thanks JustJames!

Made this one again, used a bit more tea and a bit longer steep. It actually turned out really good. Definitely has that smooth sencha taste. But it was kind of weird. My initial thought was that this tastes like a light black tea. But it wasn’t oolong’y tasting, not a roasted oolong. More like a black tea. Kind of hard to explain. But it is good.

This is a pretty good sencha. I quite like sencha and I find it hard to find a good one. This one is not as buttery as I would like. But it is smooth. There is definitely a bit more spinachy, slightly woody flavour to this sencha, but it is still good.

I had brewed this one up hot and then put it in the fridge after to make it “iced” for a recipe. Iced it is ok. I have never been a huge fan of iced greens. It is just slightly bitter as iced. But it still maintains that nice sencha flavour.

Ok to the recipe. I found the best recipe for home made Bubble Tea. YES!!!!!
So here is the recipe for 4-6 servings:
1/2cup tapioca pearls
2 TBSP honey
1/3 cup Marscapone
1 1/2 cup green or black tea, iced
2 cups juice
1 cup milk.

You are supposed to cook the tapioca as per the package. Whisk honey and marscapone together, and slowly add tea, milk, and juice. Add tapioca and serve over ice.

Well of course I could not find tapioca pearls anywhere. The only thing I could find was the tapioca that is mixed up with starch so it makes the pudding or is used as a thickener. So my bubble tea had no bubbles, but that is ok. I also used this green tea and I used strawberry-kiwi juice. I served it with fresh farmers market strawberries.

It is so good. The liquor actually has minimal colour, which I think is good. Kind of goes to show how the mass produced type bubble teas have some sort of ridiculous dye in them. It is smooth and milky. The green tea is very light underneath the milky flavour. I think next time I would use a bit more green tea. The juice adds a very light fruity flavour, mostly strawberry. The marscapone makes it thick and luxurious and the honey adds just a bit of natural tasting sweetness.

I think next time I would like to try this with a fruit flavoured tea and omit the juice part.

Enjoying the day :)

I drank this today courtesy of VariaTEA and our pre-arranged tea box drops – the stealthiest swap ever! It was a nice passionfruit blend that I enjoyed, but it didn’t wow me enough to make me want more. Still, I’m very happy to have tried it because there are lots of Nina’s teas I enjoy and I need some way to narrow it down!

From a far this tea smells like a caramel pudding my aunt made when I was a kid. On the other hand up close it smells a little like those caramel rum lifesavers ( do they even make those anymore?). It brews up to a rich mahogany colour after 3 minutes.

Hot it does taste of a rum laced caramel, with vanilla over a thin but fruity tea base. As it cools the base tea becomes denser in texture and maltier. Its quite fruity with cherry and plum notes, and a little bit of cocoa, and a floral note. The tea becomes fairly spicy, with a nutmeg and cinnamon note with a touch of pepper. There is a bit of astringency and a good dose of tannins, but the tea remains smooth and easily drinkable. It still makes me think more of a rum laced caramel, than vanilla, but at this steep time the base and flavouring compliment each other and it is quite delicious!

Thanks Laurent for the chance to try this wonderful tea!

Thanks to Laurent and Dorian @ Nina’s Paris USA for this sample! I have to admit that I didn’t pay much attention to the dry leaves because I was in morning autopilot other than to notice that there were fruity chunks included. However, when I poured the water on, I turned away to continue slicing a banana, the aroma caught up to me, and I then literally whipped my head back around to take a huge whiff. That is how heavenly this tea smells! Oh, and the taste does not disappoint either! I think I may be apple insensitive because I often don’t taste the apple flavor in tea and this is no exception. I really don’t care at all though, because this is lovely peachy-apricoty goodness with the vanilla to soften and enhance the fruit flavors. As with the other teas I’ve tried from this company, you still get a nice dose of the base tea so you know you are drinking tea and not fruit juice. The flavors are beautifully and subtly present. This is another win for Nina’s Paris! So good!!

All the previous Nina’s Paris teas I’ve tried I have really liked because the flavors were subtle, but still definitely present. In my opinion, this tea has gone over too far into subtle territory. It just seems vaguely fruity, in tropical kind of way. The keemun base really takes over. I’m not saying this tea is bad- it’s not at all. It’s just not what I expected given the description and doesn’t live up to the other Nina’s teas that I’ve tried.

Thanks to Nina’s Paris for sending this free sample. I warmed up my tiny teapot and added the tea into the hot pot to take a wiff before adding the water. I could smell the delicate peach scent and just a bit of roasty oolong. Brewed at 195F for 1.5 min. A tasty peach and a mild roasty flavour from the oolong. A very nice tea but like Terri Harplady I also got a tingling on the tongue. I finished most of mine though only because it does taste good and I’ve had worse reactions (most from David’s Tea Blends).

Yay free sample! Thanks again to Laurent and Dorian at Nina’s for the opportunity to try this one. I love genmaicha and I was excited to see how good it is with caramel and vanilla. Plus this one has quite a following around here, so I knew it had to be good! It certainly looks like genmaicha, aside from the black tea leaves. Mine had a couple of pieces of popped corn in addition to the roasted kernels. Smells vaguely caramelly but nothing too amazing. Steeped for two minutes!

The aroma of the brewed tea is much more exciting! I can smell the toasty rice mixed with the vanilla and caramel for a marshmallow treat-like scent. Mmmm! The taste is not necessarily what I expected. For some reason, from the combinations of these ingredients, the first taste I get is coconut! Whaaaat…? Then I taste dried autumn leaves, I assume from the sencha, and at the end I get more vanilla. The caramel is there, but not necessarily as a sweet taste (I don’t know if that makes sense! :P). It’s more of a richness than a candy-sweet flavor. I don’t really get black tea from this, aside from some astringency and bitterness that suggests to me that I may have steeped this incorrectly… Hmm. I have enough left for maybe a half-cup so I guess I’ll try a lower temperature or something. Either way, this tea is mighty tasty and I will definitely be purchasing it at some point! :D

Dabbling in watercolors is a messy, messy activity. Currently I am covered in various shades of green paint and a few splotches of black, yes, I am watercoloring a Creeper. The first one I did had the most lovely wash and excellent Creeper face, but when I added a bit of calligraphy I realized the character for Creeper (as in creeping vine) looked like a face and I cannot un-see! I am trying again without the calligraphy.

Today’s tea is from Nina’s Paris, (specifically their USA branch) Nina’s Japon, a blend of Black Tea, Sencha, Genmai Cha, Caramel, and Vanilla. I have a trilogy of teas from Nina’s Paris to review, thanks to a nice promotion on Steepster, and I will say this…my French accent is terrible! It is this reason (ok, there are others as well) that I do a blog and not so much the vlog. The aroma of this tea is nothing short of mouthwatering, but it did hit my ‘OMG I love these’ scale pretty hard, with strong notes of vanilla, caramel, and nutty rice. There are also notes of hay, malt, and a tiny touch of grass at the finish. I took a minute sniffing the tea thinking to myself, ‘this tea reminds me of something, something sweet and tasty that I have not had in a while,’ and it hit me, this tea smells like Creme Brulee!

After I finally manage to pull my nose out of the tea leaves and steep the tea (it was really hard) it was time to sniff the wet leaves. The aroma is still very sweet with strong notes of vanilla, toasted rice, caramel, and a tiny touch of molasses. It has gone from reminding me of Creme Brulee to Rice Crispy Treats, you know, maybe I am really hungry for sweets. The aroma of the liquid without the steeped leaves is also very sweet, with strong notes of caramel and rice, again the image of Rice Crispy Treats float into my head, but with a much richer tone.

Sipping time, I am excited, if this tea tastes as good as it smells, I have found a new favorite. I admit when I saw the ingredients I had a very strong suspicion that I would love it, but picking a sample that didn’t look like something I would like seems a little odd. Unless it is a blend that is really weird and I am doing it for an adventure, that is a whole different story…but I am getting distracted, and that is unfair to the tea. Ok, this tea is delicious, all my cravings for sweet things have been satisfied (for now) with this perfect dessert tea. The taste is a sweet blend of caramel and toasted rice with a strong vanilla taste. The vanilla taste is pretty neat because it tastes like vanilla extract smells, it is sweet and very vanilla heavy, but with just a hint of alcohol as well. After the initial sweetness there is a slight malt taste and a tiny bit of smoke at the finish that lingers into the aftertaste. I am so glad that this tea was exactly as good as it smells, I burned through my sample at lightning speed and really need to get more.

For photos and blog: http://ramblingbutterflythoughts.blogspot.com/2014/06/ninas-paris-ninas-japon-tea-review.html

The first of my three free samples from Nina’s Paris. Thanks to Laurent and Dorian for sending these my way! :) These samples came in the most adorably tiny zipper bags… I knew I wanted to try one of the zodiac rooibos blends and this one seemed like it was well-liked on Steepster. My sample didn’t have any dried strawberry pieces in it, which makes sense because it’s a small amount. It just looks like plain rooibos. The smell is delicious though! There’s a very tart, bright strawberry scent coupled with a sweet, candylike strawberry scent, in addition to sumptuous vanilla and cream aromas. My sample doesn’t really have enough for two cups, but I didn’t want to risk overleafing when I only get to try this once, so I didn’t use the whole thing. I used a slightly heaping teaspoon and brewed it for 5 minutes.

The brewed tea smells quite lovely. There’s a very juicy strawberry scent – like natural strawberry flavor that has been pumped up with a bit of artificial candy flavor. I also get vanilla and a bit of rooibos in the background. Tasting this, the strawberry flavoring reminds me of Kusmi’s Strawberry Green. It’s a somewhat “jammy” strawberry flavor, meaning it tastes deep and almost cooked with a natural sweetness. Although I don’t really get cream from this, the vanilla is a nice substitute and produces a similar effect. Then there’s that tart, interesting strawberry aftertaste, which is exactly the same as in the aforementioned Kusmi tea.

I very much enjoyed this tea, being a liker of red rooibos and strawberry things in general. I feel like milk would go well, but I was afraid it would overpower the flavors. I’m really interested in trying all of the Nina’s zodiac teas, and I wish they offered a sampler… As it is, I’ll probably just buy one of them, then when I drink it all replace it with another, and so on. :P

Thank you so much for this sample, Nina’s Paris! This tea smells wonderful and the taste delivers! Like the other Nina’s teas I’ve tried, the flavors are well executed and perfectly understated without seeming weak. How do they do that? Along with the black tea base, this tea is all tart strawberry with a creaminess from the vanilla. It reminds me a bit of strawberries romanoff. This tea does dry out my mouth more than I’d like, but that’s really the only criticism I have. Tea of the angels indeed :-).

Rooibos wasn’t really my thing, but now I find myself craving it at night…. yup. I said it. I crave rooibos! (never thought I’d see the day…)
This was a lovely sample sent to me from Laurent at Nina’s (THANK YOU!!! :)).
For a nightly rooibos, this is perfect…absolutely perfect. Caramely, and creamy, with a definite toffee-like quality. My cup managed to cool, as I found myself distracted by pokemon (yeah…pokemon. I was playing pokemon ‘x’….that sounds so uncool….), but the cooled-down cup was just as good as the piping hot one.
I really loved this, and will be adding it to my ‘must buy’ list.

This was a free sample from Nina’s Paris. I brewed it at work so I don’t know if I got the temperature exact. The base seemed to be a basic green: astringent with only light buttery notes. It picked up the citrus flavouring but not any strawberry. There seemed to be a slight bitter edge to it but that might have been me getting the temperature off. Overall, it was a decent cup but nothing stood out.

Many thanks to Laurent at Nina’s Paris USA for this sample.

It seemed from previous notes that it was the green tea to try. (yes, I know there’s black tea too but anything with sencha and genmaicha is green in my book). Caramel and genmaicha, both of which I enjoy, are supposedly present here. I brewed at 175F for fear of burning the leaves and rendering the brew too bitter to enjoy. It works fine at 175F. No additives.

It’s a nice colour, reminds me of apple juice. Clear liquid, I love those. So nice when you don’t get cloudy muck. Flavour wise I get a sweet sencha mostly. Buttery and sweet but sencha is not on my to-die-for flavour list. I also pick up something floral-y. I resteeped and it does well for a second go around.

Sadly I am not going to jump on the bandwagon of Japon lovers. To each his/her own. I enjoyed 2 out of 3 of these samples from Nina’s so pretty good I’d say!

This tea certainly has a breadier, maltier and less sweet base tea than Nina’s other black teas I’ve had. It gives the tea a certain density and takes the tea from being a spring/summer tea to a year round tea. The tea initially smells a lot like other raspberry orange teas I’ve had, but on closer inspection this one is sweeter and more rounded than the other one I currently have. The berry notes are especially noticeable under the two dominant fruits.

The raspberry and orange blended with the bready, faintly leathery base are the first notes present but once these dissipate a warm sweet mixed fruit flavour opens up underneath. The puerh mixes well with the orange raspberry and as it cools, I am tasting a bit of passion fruit between the top notes and berry, and a faint floral note in the raspberry. The tea is warming at first but finishes with a cooling feeling in the mouth. I brewed this tea for Nina’s recommended 3 min and it creates a really good balance between the flavouring and the base tea flavours. An interesting pleasant tea that I like better hot than my current raspberry/orange tea.

Thanks for the opportunity to try this tea go to Laurent at Nina’s!

Method: 1 tsp in 8 oz at 208 degrees for 3 min, tea ball

Dry Aroma: fruity and sweet. I don’t know that I’ve ever had a real passion fruit. This smells a little like mango to me.

Brewing Aroma: Same as above

Flavor: yum yum yum. Lightly sweet and fruity, and even better with sugar. The base tea isn’t bitter and lets the fruity flavors shine. Nice!

Not sure about this one. It smells fruity, but to me, the aroma is more peachy than apple! I suspect this would be an excellent cold brew; however, I just had enough for one cup. It had a hint of bitterness, but that was easily cut by a little sugar.

White Tiger Oolong… It smells so good. I get a nice scent of fresh peaches. The apricot comes out more in the flavour. Overall, a good summer blend.

The dry leaf of this tea smelled brilliant – creamy, sweet caramel!

Sipping… I am a little bit surprised that the caramel and vanilla are more toned down. I think I was expecting a stronger cup. It is still yummy, though. The black tea adds a bit of astringency even with a short steep time, so I would watch it closely. For me, I would like to have a stronger vanilla and caramel note, but I can see this being a nice cup for someone who wants a more subtle flavor. Thank you, Laurent, for a sample of this tea!