Palais des Thes

This is ok. It’s a little weaker than I typically like for this time of year especially. This might be a nice summer tea.

I’m so excited! I’m usually so bad at picking up the various notes, and I’ll read reviews and be wondering what the heck I drank compared to what everyone else has to say! This time, I actually DID figure out the sweetness and the chestnut notes, so I’m honestly rather proud. It’s a very light tea in steeped color, so light it made me wonder if I’d done something wrong. And unsurprisingly, it doesn’t have a super strong flavor, but it’s still plenty strong. It’s lightly astringent in a good way, and doesn’t have any grassiness or spinach flavor, which is my turnoff in green teas. I wouldn’t necessarily rebuy just because it’s not my – cup of tea – but it’s very nice.

This needs a little more oomph to be a first thing in the morning tea. However, it’s a nice smooth option for midmorning or lunch. It’s both lightly malty and lightly sweet tasting (not sugary, just tea sweet).

This is another very smooth tea. The orange peel is present but not overwhelming, and there is kind of a generic spiciness to it. It reminds me of what good old Constant Comment should be. (It’s an old favorite of mine, I used to drink it with my grandma. :) ) I wish it had a more present spiciness – I wouldn’t call this one chai (I know the word just means tea, but we have coopted it to mean a spicy flavor). It’s still enjoyable, though.

I’m not the biggest Earl Grey fan in the world, but if I liked it more, I think I’d love this one. Nicely balanced and very smooth.

As the Jardin à la française tea from Palais des Thés was quite successful as a tea to have iced over the Summer, and my stock was running out, I organised to get some more at the shop in Angers. Bought another tea I am going to try out as iced tea, as long as the warm weather continues, but first I wanted to try the samples (tea bag) I was given.
This Thé du Hammam was one of them. Palais des Thés really takes care of the way it packs the tea : although I prefer loose tea (and buy it in practical pouches which can be closed again after use), their tea bags are very “chic”. It says “Inspired by a traditional Turkish recipe, this green tea smells of orange blossoms, roses, berries, and the flesh of green dates.” I think there also might be some vanilla present, which combines quite nicely with the berries. I am not a big berry flavoured tea fan, but here they don´t dominate the blend. I maybe had the tea steeping for a bit longer than indicated on the tea bag (5´instead of 3´), but the colour was still very pale strawlike. Not too aromatical, and also in taste the berries are very well detectable…but fortunately don´t dominate the taste either. Couldn´t really tell the other aroma´s (orange very subtle, rose ?, green dates maybe more indirectly through the tea´s sweetness), but on the whole it is balanced and easy drinking, not too grassy (what I hate about a lot of green teas). Nice to try, nothing to drink regularly though…for me at least.

Stronger tea with an aroma! Very nice Yunnan and well worth the purchase!

Oh so good with milk!

Light and sweet flavor of the apple and the spices.

About a month ago, I tried this tea in the convential way and I really liked it. Summer has arrived and from the beginning, temperatures are high, very high even (up to 40ºC), and then I want my water to be a little bit less tasteless. I had already picked this tea to make home made ice tea, and I have started to make batches of it daily this week : what a lovely iced tea this Jardin à la française makes! Basically the same aroma´s as the hot brewed tea, and the sweetness of the pear works very well in this iced tea. I already know I´ll have to plan a visit to the shop when returning to Belgium (or France) in August, as I´m sure this pack will have gone.

Last week I was in my home country (Belgium), and I travelled around quite a bit. It´s amazing how often a tea shop now makes part of those nice little shops one can find in a city´s centre, and Louvain-la-Neuve is not an exception. Near the Grand Place is a wonderful tea shop from the French Palais des Thés chain. As soon as I stepped in, I was offered a taster (I could choose between a black tea and a herbal tea, I opted for the first) and I got an explanation about the way they present the teas here (you can experience the fragrances of the tea by picking up a bell glass), before I started my discovery tour of the shop and the teas they offered. The packaging is really well taken care of, also the design I think is really nice, and the choice offered of tea is alright (not too many “off the beaten track” teas though). As I find it particularly difficult to find a nice fruit based tea (on the real stuff, not on aroma´s!) I can easily cold brew, I finally bought this Jardin à la française tea, which is a herbal tea dominated by a very natural pear fragrance. Back at home, I tried the tea today…preparing it the “normal” way, i.e. hot : the very elegant pear fragrance is present in the loose tea, in the steeping tea, in the final brew, until the last sip, which is definitely a big plus! After 4-5 minutes of steeping, the colour is still very light, but the taste is well developed (and the pear taste always comes over naturally), so I can only imagine this giving a wonderful result cold as well. I only hope I´ll still be having tea when the hot days arrive and I really need a cold brew ;-)

Cold Brew Sipdown (234)!

Finishing this one off this afternoon as a cold brew, just to do something different with it. I actually really like this cold brew – like, A LOT more than I enjoyed the hot cups of it. It’s really quite silky and smooth with primarily bergamot notes and then hints of jasmine and something creamy in the undertones. It almost tastes like it could be a cream Earl Grey blend, but I don’t think there’s actually vanilla in this tea so I don’t know where that’s coming from…

Really though, it’s great. Even if the vanilla flavour winds up being a ‘phantom note’ concocted by my subconscious, this is a very smooth brew with the perfect ratio of bergamot/earl grey flavours and floral notes.

Drank this one again today at work.

It started off the exact same as the first tasting I had with it, but as the tea cooled down significantly throughout the busy work day it seemed to feel more dull/flat in taste at luke warm/cold temperatures than it does when hot and fresh. Best drink this one hot, I feel.

Another from MissB!

Is it weird to say that I was more fascinated by the test tube-looking container this sample came in than the tea itself? I felt like I was doing some kind of weird science as I poured the leaf out into the Steeper to brew this up. Tea science. It was satisfying.

So, what I’m gathering from the Steepster page for this tea since I don’t read French well is that this is basically a green and black hybrid with jasmine and bergamot. I guess that sounds alright; not super thrilling though. Not all that unique either. It does brew up pretty nicely though; quite smooth and flavourful with more of the black tea coming through than the green, and a bigger presence of jasmine than bergamot. Still hints of both the green base and the bergamot but very much undertones. It’s nice, I’ll make it through the sample just fine. Probably wont spend much time dwelling on it afterwards though.

Oddly, not enjoying this as much as I have in the past. Mind you, cooled, any tea tastes differently. So I’m chalking it up to the temperature and not the tea. For now. ;)

Cooled, this smells like grassy, pink, cheap bubblegum, the kind you’d get when you were a kid, all soft and gooey even as you took it out of the packaging. Add in some wheatgrass juice smell (not taste) and you’ve got a lovely little mix. Some floral notes, a bit thick and buttery, it’s lovely… just not amazing.

A beautifully stunning, complex tea. Smells softly of vanilla and something floral (like cornflowers, not jasmine) and sweet. I love this tea. Love like a delicate flower that isn’t too cloying and sweet, yet still magically dances in the breeze joyfully.

Yes, it’s that good.

Okay, not my favorite. I hoped, after smelling it, that I could learn to love this… c’mon, it’s Palais des Thes. But the scents of jasmine and bergamot… nope, nope, nope. Just not my thing. Maybe, possibly, on their own… yea, no.

This might be lovely for someone that loves these flavors in their tea – and thus why I keep on giving this to an ex who LOVES blergamot.

Received another sample box from Palais des Thes because my original RedditGift got lost in transit – and then arrived four months later. So, expect more of these reviews in the next few months.

An oldie from Sil, I think.

I really like it. Nice and sweet and fruity, and I do like the bergamot as an addition.

Sadly, the primary ingredient is apples, and so I will probably be regretting this cup of tea in a couple hours. Darn apples are everywhere.

Had this twice now, not getting anything out of it other than a bit of spicy grass. It’s very, very subtle. Which is odd considering there was a huge chunk of what looked like dried orange peel in this steeping.

This makes a rather bitter cold brew, unfortunately. I used around 10g of leaf in my 1.3-ish litre jug so I wonder if I dialled it back a bit on the dry leaf, it would have turned out better. The liquor was a bright green so I knew right away it was going to go south. The fruits were muted and lovely, so this does have potential, but I’ll have to experiment with this further.

It’s been nearly two months since I fainted and screwed up my neck, and it’s still sore, so I’m sitting here feeling useless and wanting to go back to the gym but not sure if I should yet? I could always use these days off as an opportunity to tackle my new teas, though. Hmm.

Wicked cool finding this at Winners. They had quite a few of theirs available but in the end, this was the only one that seemed worthwhile. I won’t be rating this just yet seeing that, in the end, I do have the flu and was luckily sent home today since a co-worker so happened to be scheduled to come in for a shorter mid-shift and was ok with taking my closing hours. All of those times I covered for everyone else has paid off! I insisted on staying if she had plans tonight but she reassured me she didn’t and didn’t mind. Phew, I’ve gotten worse throughout the evening with body aches and fatigue, sorer throat, etc, so I couldn’t imagine being there still.

The dry leaf smells mostly of red fruits, and quite frankly, this aligns with the taste. Granted, my tastebuds are currently compromised, but I bought this before I got sick and it even smelled mostly of red fruits then, as well. Maybe a soft rose note scent-wise, but I’m definitely not getting that in the flavour.

It’s nice to experience a green tea that doesn’t go bitter extremely easily either.

This tastes and smells like Christmas to me. Almond spice, light and creamy (like a marzipan), it’s quite lovely and unexpected.