Citron-Caviar Rose

A sipdown!

To further complicate the description of this tea….mine says something different in the ingredients. Mine says “fruit and subtle flowers combine with bergamot and a hint of rose on a black tea base that has notes of wood and cocoa.”

The aroma is more lime than bergamot to me. Is finger lime (in someone else’s description) the same as bergamot?

Edited to add: One package was reported as having finger lime listed as an ingredient. I just looked that up and it is also called a caviar lime. I wondered why on earth they added the word caviar in the name. No wonder we perceived lime flavor as prevalent.

This is mostly citrusy with the barest hint of rose if I close my eyes and look for it and pretend I found it. The black tea base is very woody indeed. If it has chocolate notes, I must be honest that the lime/bergamot aftertaste is covering that up for me. It is not terribly strong bergamot, though. And I really do get more of a lime vibe from this. This packet is new so this should be the current recipe. It was purchased at the Dammann Freres shop in Paris just a few weeks ago.

I am icing some now to see if I like it sweet and cold. It is good, but not one I need to repurchase.

March 2022 Sipdown Challenge – A French tea

Been making mostly ambient-brewed pitchers of this tea. Today was the first time I prepared it hot.

A medium-oxidized black, the tea itself is juicy and glassy with a mild sparkling astringency and woody taste. I really want to know if Dammann Frères selects for these qualities in brewed leaf or if it’s an added ‘natural flavoring’ that creates this glassy-juicy effect consistently for me with many of their teas. I love it.

If there is a cocoa note inherent to this leaf, it is very subtle. The bergamot takes center stage but it is not bold or brash. The finger lime floats the peppery notes of the bergamot very well and in a lively way, where the pepper also meets with rose and wafts out of the cup. I like rose that is spicy rather than perfumey and this tea’s representation of rose is just that. Fuuug, this is some balanced tea.

EDIT Looks like the new recipe has no bergamot peel or oil but uses lemon peel. I’m befuddled. It tastes just like bergamot. Maybe my bag was from the old recipe.

Ambient-brewed pitchers are fantastically refreshing. According to friend Jacques, when added to a glass of scotch, not only does the cool tea unbutton the scotch as a bit of water would, it adds something mysterious.

Looking through my cupboard I was shocked that I had never reviewed this one. It is one of my new favorites! Rectifying that now.

This tea, amazingly, fills the hole left by the dear, departed Bergamot Rose Laoshan Black from Verdant, since they no longer blend their teas. No, the base tea isn’t as good as Laoshan Black, but it is distinctly different than DF’s normal black tea bases and does seem to be a high quality Chinese black with long wiry leaves. It is so fluffy it didn’t fit in one of my standard 100g tins that all other DF teas fit in, I had to use an extra large tin. The flavors are chocolate, rose, and bergamot, which is pretty much heaven for me. In the end, this tea may be BETTER than BRLB because I taste more of the bergamot and rose, which is always something I had problems with. There is really not much more I could ask of this tea, and I hope they never stop carrying it.