Palais des Thes

I have a few of the muslin sachets of Palais des Thés Thé du Hammam and since I did not awaken until 1pm I figured that drinking green tea at 9pm will simply cement my nocturnal summer schedule. Here I come, 4am…

This may be a case where I’d be happier to see the tea. I certainly did not grasp any of the apparently abundant florality present here: roses, sunflowers, and blue mallow. I really only tasted the green tea (which I do not believe is sencha, in contrast to some reviewers) and the berry flavoring, which seemed somewhat artificial and, what is worse, much louder than the green tea base.

I don’t usually enjoy the taste of sunflowers in tea, so I did not miss it here. I have no idea what blue mallow should taste like, but I love rose and do not really taste or smell it in this blend. I should probably do a second steep, since generally by then the flavor on top subsides, allowing the underlying green tea to reveal some of its character.

I do like this hot. It tastes… sumptuous and decadent. But I made some before I got distracted today. Went off to my hair appointment and it sat on the counter for an hour or so. Completely cold when I returned. Not luxurious so much now but seriously floral and heavily bergamot. It’s official. I like this one hot and really like it cold. :)

Oooo… now that I’ve had this twice more I can say with certainty that I like it quite a bit. It’s a thick, leathery, masculine Earl that still smells very feminine. The bergamot is really bold and strong. Mom noticed right away today that it also smells of roses when dry in the tin. I hadn’t picked that out before but yeah – really, really rosy. In scent only, though. In taste, this is pure bergamot with that thick, mildly malty Yunnan base.

And having tried this with 3 different preparation methods I now know how I like it. My first time was here at home with tap water. Just kind of meh and somewhat disappointing. Second time was at work with filtered water. Okay, but still underwhelming – I have since discovered that my hot water at work isn’t really hot enough for most of the teas I drink at only 150F!

This time I made it here at home with boiling spring water. That’s more like it. I no longer feel like I wasted my money buying a tin of this. :)

This is an odd tea. I would guess it is the Yunnan base that makes the bergamot stranger than in other Earls. It both smells and tastes highly perfumed but there is also a depth to it that isn’t in other Earls. It is thicker. I haven’t decided yet if I like this blend. It is, at the very least, interesting. But I need more cups to decide. :)

I now have the aluminum test tube set of Le Palais des Thé’s Signature Classics. I bought the green set first, and then I decided to buy the classics as well because I am obsessed with the test tubes. Difficult to believe, perhaps, but nonetheless true…

The good new is that this Margaret’s Hope loose leaf is better than the cotton muslin pillow case version—at least it seemed better today! I should say that I used quite cool water: only 80C, and my usual 3 minutes for darjeeling. The light amber liquor was very tasty and smooth and not at all grassy, interestingly enough.

I should be able to make two more glasses with what’s left in the tube after removing 3 grams today. Then I’ll be using the test tube to store small amounts of tea. I should probably add that I bought these sets from a social-shopping site for a fraction of MSRP.

Here’s a really good example of what I was just talking about in my tasting note on Norbu Margaret’s Hope FTGFOP Autumn Flush Darjeeling (http://steepster.com/Shera%20Pop/posts/248914).

Palais des Thés sachets in the shiny silver foil envelope offer zero information beyond the fact that this darjeeling came from Margaret’s Hope estate. It’s aimed for people who don’t even know where Margaret’s Hope estate is, as revealed by the text:

A superb tea from the high Himalayan plateaux.

Of course that gives no clue as to ftgfop1, first, second, or autumn flush. That means that the company is free to throw n’importe quoi together in the sachet and call it a day.

All of that said, this sachet darjeeling tastes pretty good. I used the same steeping parameters and the resultant amber liquor is definitely grassier and a bit rougher than the Norbu. Still, this is certainly a good example of the general category of darjeeling for people who are working their way through the sampler box.

(Blazing New Rating #67)

Thank you Dexter for sending some of this my way. I was holding off trying it in hopes of having it when I freed my variable temp kettle from storage jail but that doesn’t seem to be happening anytime soon so I just decided to go ahead and make it. My first few sips were a nice fruity flavor, though not a distinctive flavor. Then, I ate dinner, and as I ate, the tea cooled and the green base took over and left a grassy taste in my mouth. So this isn’t bad when hot but really should not be given the chance to cool. Hopefully this isn’t reflected in the cold brew of this that I made a couple days ago…

It’s… fine? It tastes fine, it’s not bad or anything. It’s just not noteworthy. It tastes like a basic Japanese sencha. Lightly grassy. I feel like this can become bitter more easily than average, but once you figure out what works for you it’s fine.

This cotton muslin sachet version from Palais des Thés is my only available Long Jing until October! Long Jingy enough under the circumstances, but I much prefer some of the other loose leaf offerings (Teavivre, Tazo, et al.).

I finished my test tube of loose-leaf Long Jing from Palais des Thés. It really seems more like a blend to me. Will not buy a full supply.

Unexpectedly, the looseleaf Long Jing from Palais des Thés in the sleek aluminum tube seems not to be as good as the tea in the cotton muslin sachet. Strange.

I had been wondering what their Long Jing leaves would look like and was surprised to find that they are very broken up. It’s quite possible that this is an old batch which has been jostled about a lot, as I bought the box set from one of the social shopping sites. The liquor was darker golden veering peach (not green) in color, but there were lots of particles at the bottom of the glass, so that probably had something to do with it. The taste was not that great either, and the liquor had none of the silken texture which I’ve come to associate with Long Jing.

The best part of this experience was the housing: I love the test tubes and will use them to store small amounts of teas once I’ve emptied them. Which won’t take long—this one contained less than 10 grams…

In my side-by-side comparison of Les Palais des Thés Long Jing (in a muslin sachet) with Mighty Leaf Organic Green (in a see-through sachet), I discovered today that the Mighty Leaf is probably (as I had been suspecting) a blend, not a straight-up Long Jing. The muslin sachet from Les Palais des Thés, in contrast, has a smoother and more silky texture, along with a less vegetal and more chestnutty flavor.

I conclude that this is the better choice for those seeking a portable Long Jing experience.

Another green tea in a muslin sack from Palais des Thés, this one contains Long Jing. The contents are quite broken up, which is a bit surprising. I’d have expected the opposite, given the porosity of these little cotton knapsacks.

The liquor looks like Long Jing: faint peachy green, and the taste is okay. It’s definitely not as smooth, and there is a touch of bitterness, though I followed my usual guidelines for this type of tea. Once again I find myself in the position of saying that this is better than average for a bagged green, but not such a good example of the named tea in question.

(Blazing New Rating #51)

Well, this mug of sachet-prepared Sencha Ariake from Palais des Thés is not bad at all and a lot better than the current competition chez moi in the Japanese Sencha category—all none of it. Yes, that’s right: the only sencha available to me at the moment are the remaining cotton muslin sacks (more than sachets!) of Sencha Ariake. I won’t be leaving this tea-challenged environment for more than a week, so until then I have created my own desert-island testing camp.

Once again, as in the case of this company’s Long Jing, my impression is buoyed through deprivation. Perhaps the key to loving any tea is to drink it in a desert-island scenario, so to speak.

It’s probably not fair to imbibe Palais des Thés Sencha Ariake so soon after having enjoyed ichiban sencha and gyokuro, but it was the luck of the brew.

Sencha Ariake brews up quite a bit more yellow than I was expecting. The temperature was lower than their prescribed 75C, and I kept the brewing time short. Still, the liquor ended up looking more like the color (bright yellow veering gold, not green) I expect to see in a second infusion of many green teas…

The taste is good but less smooth and closer to a bagged green than a true sencha. I am using the muslin cotton sachets, which have the same sort of cotton stitching as the Mighty Leaf Sachets and have the same droopy look. The size is similar to that of the Kusmi muslin sachets.

I don’t know, but the dried tea seemed heartier than I am accustomed to seeing for sencha. It might be that they need to use something a bit more rough-hewn so that the particles will not all rush through the large pores of these cotton sacks.

This tea is pretty good for a bagged green tea, not so great for a sencha. Will not restock once this small supply (from two large sample set boxes) has been depleted.

(Blazing New Rating #47)

Also received this in my Try the World Paris box… it’s a decent black, but I’ve definitely had better.