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My cold brewed green of the day, once again courtesy of MissB. I tend to drink these without looking at what the flavoring “should” be, so it’s always a surprise. This one, I would have guessed citrus and vanilla, which is pretty close. Knowing that there is also rhubarb, now I really taste the rhubarb. It is not unlike the rhubarb and custard hard candies that I got in England. This was quite tasty, although the cream was perhaps a little much? I dunno, with the new association in my head, I like it better than I did before I looked it up. Weird how that works.

This is a tea I really wanted to try (pistachio and marzipan was the original description on The O Dor’s site), but the shop was out when I was in Brussels. Fortunately MissB had some to send along!

I feel like there are some weird translation issues here. Is it a macaroon, or macaron? Actually I think the answer is both? (Side note: The O Dor updated their website and it is a million billion times easier to use, plus they give ingredients now). It does have both “macaron” flavors, and coconut, which is more macaroon. What I taste is a lot of pistachio, a hint of almond, some creamy coconut, and an underlying base of chocolate. It’s not exactly what I was expecting, but it is delicious. I think I would prefer it without the coconut, but I don’t really care for coconut in my black tea. Regardless, I am happy to have tried this one (but I don’t think I will be ordering 100g any time soon).

Yet another tea from MissB. I did ask her for any Fauchon teas I hadn’t tried, and this was one. I had a cup of it hot yesterday and realized that I don’t care for hot flavored green teas anymore (except for my rose dragonwell). So I decided to take this one and the rest of the greens she sent me home to cold brew, because I do actually prefer cold brew flavored green tea to black these days!

And I did vastly prefer it as a cold brew. I actually had no idea what the flavors in this were supposed to be, and what I came up with was violet and some others. Apparently it’s citrus and lavender? Wrong purple flower. Well I don’t taste the lavender (fine for me!) and I do get some fruity notes that could be citrus. Overall it was more one those inscrutible french blends that’s impossible to pull apart, but works well together. All in all, yum.

Another sample courtesy of MissB! This one I had a little extra leaf from what I would normally use, so I added it and tried to compensate via steeping parameters. It kinda worked? It’s still a hint bitter, so I would say this is likely a slighly finnicky tea to begin with. That said, it is caramelly. Intensely. Lots and lots of buttery caramel. Quite tasty, although the slightly too-bold base dampens my enjoyment a bit. I agree with Sil that DF’s buttery green oolong base better serves this flavoring. Glad to have tried this one, thanks!

Another tea with just enough for a cup from MissB. Thansk for sending it along! I like to take advantage of getting small samples of MF teas when I can since their bases can be so hit or miss for me. This one was tasty, but kind of duplicates other teas in my cupboard.

This is definitely hazelnut, vanilla, and caramel in the flavor. They are all nicely complementary, and it is overall tasty. However, the base on this has a sneaking bitter note that reminds you to brew this one carefully. I prefer DF’s Fleurilege, which this is very close to in flavor. Still, happy to try it!

I have been moving recently (up north, to take a new job), and thus not in a situation where I can easily drink tea all the time. But I have a few weeks where it will be easier, so I am going to attempt to drink more of the samples that MissB sent me recently!

I have wanted to try this one for a while, ever since people rhapsodized about how it was the perfect almond tea. Almond is perhaps my favorite flavor, yet I have never really found a perfect almond tea. Most often a purely almond-flavored tea suffers from thinness in the texture, I find. MissB was kind enough to send a bit of this my way so I could finally try it.

It certainly delivers in the almond flavor. And it isn’t as thin as say, DF’s Amande Amaretti, although it is still a little thinner than I would like. I agree with someone (Ysaurella?) that this seems like a keemun-y base. Decent, but not my fave. There is some light note that I don’t care for that is definitely coming from the base, but the almond covers it fairly well.

All in all I am very glad to have tried this one. I also think that I don’t necessarily need a straight up almond tea; apparently I like my almond a bit blended (preferrably with rose and vanilla). But this is definitely the best straight almond tea I have yet tried.

This sample came to me from MissB, thanks! This tea reminded me a lot of Fauchon’s Chocolate Eclair, but on a black base instead of a dark oolong. A little more robustness to the base, but still a lot of thick milk chocolate flavor and sweetness, presumably from actual chocolate in the blend as well as the cacao nibs I see. This one left some substantial sludge in the bottom of my cup. Nonetheless, still quite tasty. Thanks for sending it along!

Equusfell brought this one and it was quite delicious. I honestly was not expecting much, not because I have experience with these type of teas, but because most green teas are just ok to me. This had a lot going on though. The early steeps were sweet and had an almost vanilla-like creamy note to them. The later steeps were more floral and also buttery, almost like a nice TGY, but with different florals. Quite tasty overall; I’m curious how this would perform as a western steep as well.

I provided some of this one to gongfu, which I had not done with this tea before. I wondered how the blends club blends would hold up to a gongfu type environment, but given that their steeping instructions were all nearly gongfu-ish, I thought it was worth a shot. I used the steeping instructions as a starting point, which was almost semi-gongfu because there was less leaf than I would normally use in a gaiwan.

This one held up well, giving lots of cinnamon sugar cookie flavor in all steeps. The last steep we had, which was 3 minutes long, was nicely bready. I definitely enjoy this tea a lot, although it is more of a fall/winter blend than summer.

Going to be better about logging all the teas that Equusfell brings to our gongfu sessions; last time I didn’t log any of the teas we drank.

This was the first tea we had. I really like Teavivre’s Nonpareil Huang Shan Mao Feng, so I was interested to try this one. I definitely got the chestnutty notes from this one, but less strongly, and it was a tad bit astringent at first. I think I might prefer this tea in a western-style steep more than the gongfu; all of the steeps seemed kind of flat and boring, but I bet they would be good layered on top of each other.