Marie-Antoinette

A tin of this came in the mail today and I could SMELL IT THROUGH THE BOX! It was inside a tin and the box and I could smell it. This stuff is way stronger than the sample I had a few days ago. I’m going to leave it exposed to air for a couple hours, then leave the closed tin on the counter away from my tea stash. Hopefully it will mellow out. What I loved about the Nina’s samples was how subtle the flavours were. Right now this tea has all the subtlety of a frat boy on spring break. I still love this tea, it’s just a little too potent right now. I rate it at 70 until it calms down.

This tea’s claim to fame is that it uses apples from King Louis XVI’s kitchen garden in Versailles, which is pretty damn cool. After sampling this blend, I’m wondering whether Marie-Antoinette ordered her husband’s apple trees to be watered with wine? ;)

Dry, this smelled like a cheap sauvignon blanc. Bleh!
Steeped it smells a bit better, like mulled wine and there’s the Jolly Rancher note that others are mentioning. Taste, hint of light rose, but overall just fermented.

Kind thanks to Laurent for the sample, but this one isn’t for me.

Thank you Nina’s for this tea sample!

Sweet, yellow delicious apples grew outside my bedroom window facing East towards the Coast Range just shy of the Pacific Ocean.

My father, Bill, had chosen a dwarf variety…which produced so many apples, that the tree appeared to be a vine with stakes holding up the branches across the end of the house. The flesh was soft, sweet and perfumed with an almost honeysuckle scent.

No apples are so sweet, as Sun ripened!

Nina’s reminds me of those apples and the flowers I would have found in my Grandmothers garden. Roses, camilias, dogwood trees,lilys and room for her prized tomatoes. (I still have handwritten recipes for catsup and venison).

My mind wandered to Versailles. Dappled sunlight shining through the apple trees, a breeze rifting leaves like many courtesans fans.
Marie-Antoinette Tea would suit such oppulance of architecture and nature.

I didn’t find the tea too much like Apple cider. Usually apple teas are flat and bland for my taste.(Possibly some people steep longer and the tea sours?)

A delightfully elegant tea.

Thank you much Lala for this sample ad so sorry it took me so long to try it….so much tea, so little time!
This was first on my list because honestly, I have been a little scared of it. I love flowery teas, but for some reason, I am not a fan of rose. Anyway, it smelled and tasted pretty strongly of rose. So, it is just not for me. I am glad that I got to try it though!

Sipdown, 241 (yeah, I only ended up adding a few new teas so my count didn’t go to high!). Thanks to Nina’s Paris for the sample of this tea!

Rose and apple; I knew I had to request this one as one of my samples. The smell of the steeped tea is kind of odd, and I guess it’s just the rose and apple combining somewhat strangely. If I smell closely enough, I can pick out the two scents independantly, but it’s not easy.

Unfortunately, this one was not as successful to me as it was for other people. It comes across as bitter and perfumy to me. I am not sure what people are talking about when they say that the bitterness reminds me of biting into an apple and getting apple skin… apple skin isn’t especially tart or bitter to me, and I just ate an apple for lunch this afternoon. There is definitely a good amount of really appley flavor here (although it is perhaps more apple candy than fresh apple), and some herbaceous rose, so I think that perhaps if I steeped this one for a shorter time or at a lower temp, it would come out smoother and work better, but if the astringency is built in for some reason, I don’t know.

This sample was amazing!

I wish I took pictures of this blend! More if I could capture the smell to show everyone! Very amazing apple scent!

Taste? Great black tea base, loads of natural and fresh apple flavor. I sat there awhile trying to figure out what kind of apple I was tasting. The apple was crisp, like a golden delicious, but the skin tasted sweet like a red delicious or gala. The floral is really low here but melded with the apple.

Love it! I need more of this tea sometime.

Full Review on my blog, the oolong owl. I did a review of the 3 samples I received! http://oolongowl.wordpress.com/2013/03/17/ninas-paris-sample-tea-review/

Full review on http://sororiteasisters.com/ on the 2nd of March but here are the snippits:

Marie-Antoinette from Nina’s Paris has a wonderful aroma. I just love sitting here smelling it fill the air around me with the scents of roses and fresh apples. Its almost too good to drink! The apple aroma is that of mulled cider, or the smell that fills the air every year at the Apple Festivals that are commonly held in my area. It just makes me feel warm and sunny on this cold snowy winter’s day.

The more I sip it the more it grows on me. I think any person who loves apple flavor should try this tea. Its so subtle, does not try to flood your taste buds over with flavor but yet it is so true to what apple tastes like when you bite into one. I can even taste apple skin in this tea.

Dry, this tea smells fruity, but I can’t put my finger on which fruit. While steeping, there is a green fruity rose scent rising from my cup. The first few sips had a bitter twinge which made me question if the three minutes I had steeped it for was too long, but that turned into a short burst of tartness. I just re-read the tea description – apples! Apples and roses, that makes the tartness make sense! It’s like you are biting into an apple and you get that bit of tartness of the skin before the sweet flavor hits you! Adding a little sugar brings out the sweetness of the apples and mellows out that tart burst. The rose seems to mix in the middle of the sip and remains on the end after the apple fades out, although the taste lingering after each sip is pretty balanced between the two. My mouth feels a little dry after, the same feeling I get when I eat rose petals. I’m impressed how this tea is able to taste so much like ripe apples, yet not taste like apple juice. It is as if I just bit into the most juicy floral apple ever. Towards the end of my cup, when the tea has cooled, I’m getting more rose in the beginning of each sip. I steeped a second time for four minutes and put a teaspoon of sugar in this time. The flavor was really amped up! Third steeping at five minutes is a little weaker, but still has a surprising amount of flavor. Fourth steeping at six minutes still has a decent amount of flavor and a bit of that apple tartness! This tea just keeps going!

Another free sample!

Sad to say, this one isn’t for me. It tastes so much like perfume that I can’t even imagine there’s apples in it. I guess there’s only a few teas with rose in it that I truly can handle/enjoy.