This tea would have fared better if it hadn’t been the last stop on my Dammann Frères journey. It’s a bit unfair, I know – I will try my best to keep an open mind. It’s just that both the dry tea and the steeped tea are saturated with this – as I have now come to know it – unmistakable DF perfume.
I can’t really explain it, but it’s this opulent, contrived richness that just seems inescapable. It’s the tea equivalent of orientalizing, exoticizing 19th-century art, pretending to be something it’s not, glorifying something that shouldn’t be glorified.
I guess the evident response would be, ’It’s just tea,’ but I don’t think we should make it too easy on ourselves.
Either way, this is a beautifully scented fruity black. In the cup there’s a light peach-apricot presence, some floral notes, and a smooth vanilla to round it off. Again – and this is turning into a bit of a broken record, I know – DF’s vanilla isn’t really my favourite. It’s a little too much, a little cloying, and has the slightest aftertaste of alcohol.
For someone who’s into elegant fruity blacks, though, this would be a perfect choice.
[From my epic Instant-Thé order to Rome, October 2013.]
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:( I have my answer for black teas.
I loved this one, very refined and elegant but I liked the DF Vanilla and it is a very present vanilla in Nosy Bey
I would have rated it higher if I’d tried it last week, I think. There was another black, or maybe two, that got a higher rating earlier. Now they all just sort of taste the same to me. Why do they have so many similar teas? It’s the most frustrating thing for me, I think.
they more than often use the same base (china and ceyton mix). Lazyness is a nasty sin…
but sometimes the flavours make them so different, it’s rare but it happens.
Never really tried their greens because I think now I am not a green lover (except for Oolongs)
I think it’s definitely more obvious in their greens – so many similar ones there. You don’t like MF’s greens either?
let’s say I can drink them more than I like them.
Except Sakura 2000 I really love
:( I have my answer for black teas.
I loved this one, very refined and elegant but I liked the DF Vanilla and it is a very present vanilla in Nosy Bey
I would have rated it higher if I’d tried it last week, I think. There was another black, or maybe two, that got a higher rating earlier. Now they all just sort of taste the same to me. Why do they have so many similar teas? It’s the most frustrating thing for me, I think.
they more than often use the same base (china and ceyton mix). Lazyness is a nasty sin…
but sometimes the flavours make them so different, it’s rare but it happens.
Never really tried their greens because I think now I am not a green lover (except for Oolongs)
I think it’s definitely more obvious in their greens – so many similar ones there. You don’t like MF’s greens either?
let’s say I can drink them more than I like them.
Except Sakura 2000 I really love