No. 39 Fez

Lucky 13th day of my advent calendar from Sara!

This is a pretty tasty Moroccan Mint. I taste the spearmint and lemon, and at the end of the sip, I swore I tasted bergamot at first, but that must be the myrtle. It’s smooth and kind of creamy somehow. The lemon and spearmint balance nicely until the end of the sip, where the myrtle takes over.

I typed a really long piece on fire ecology, prescribed burning and my emotional sadness regarding the victims of the current Camp Fire in northern California but this is not the place for that so I deleted it. The smoke from that fire has blown southwest and blanketed the Bay. I’ve had a persistent headache for 3 days and woke up with a very rare nosebleed this morning. I brewed this sample from Mastress Alita, something light and refreshing that might make me feel a little better.

Fez is a pleasant blend of a grassy Chinese green, lemon myrtle and spearmint. I think the spearmint is a little underplayed here and the lemon myrtle too dominant for the type of green tea used. A second steep really brings out the lemon myrtle and a tinge of astringency. Whatever compound is responsible for lemon myrtles scent and taste seems to be the same used in lemon PEZ candy and in lemon Pledge furniture cleaner/polish, so don’t do that second steep if either of those turns you off. Otherwise, I find this to be to be a generally nice, smooth blend and would really like to try it as a cold brew.

June Wedding! Something new! This is one of the few Seven Smith Teamaker teas my local grocery has, so I picked up a box tonight. This is their Moroccan Mint blend, and most Moroccan mint teas I’ve had have gunpowder green bases; this one is a Mao Feng base, and adds lemon myrtle (my favorite of the citrus herbs) along with the spearmint. So I’m actually pretty curious about this! I’ve also just been pretty pleased with the other teas I’ve tried from them in the past; their chamomile tea is one of the few chamomiles I can drink (thanks to the blend of rooibos and other florals helping mellow the flavor a bit) and their earl grey is probably my favorite plain earl grey I’ve had yet.

This was certainly a tea to my tastes! The spearmint and lemon myrtle blend into a really lovely flavor combination that isn’t too minty, and isn’t too lemony, while still providing nice flavor notes of both. And the green tea base has a very nice grassy flavor that can still be tasted beneath the mint and citrus, which I appreciate. The whole blend works together very harmoniously, and I’m imagining that this tea would work really well iced, as well. I imagine that will be the next thing I do with this!

Before I start this review, allow me to state that I am exceptionally picky when it comes to mint teas. I either like them or I don’t. There is usually little, if any middle ground. Oddly, this one fell into that precious little space in the middle for me. I didn’t really care for it, but at the same time, I have had worse. I will explain why I felt this way in a moment, but before I do that, I would like to backtrack a bit.

My on-again, off-again relationship with Maghrebi mint teas started with a spur-of-the-moment trip with a now ex-girlfriend to Bloomington, IN while still an undergraduate. In between visiting local shops and the beautiful campus of IU-Bloomington, we stopped at a small Mediterranean restaurant. It was a cool early spring afternoon and we agreed to split a pot of Moroccan mint tea to help us warm up as quickly as possible. It was absolutely delicious. Unfortunately, the waiter was unwilling to divulge any information about the tea. All he offered was that it was the owner’s favorite blend and that the owner was very secretive about it. I still have no clue what the tea was. I have tried several Moroccan mint blends in the years since, but have yet to find anything remotely resembling that tea.

I had high hopes when I received a sample sachet of this tea with a recent Steven Smith order. I normally like the teas offered by Steven Smith and figured that there was a good chance I would enjoy this one. Maybe it would even be similar to that beloved mint tea from long ago. Sadly, it wasn’t. First, this is not exactly a traditional Moroccan blend. Rather than using a base of Chinese or Ceylonese gunpowder green tea blended with fresh spearmint leaves, this is a blend of Zhejiang Mao Feng (the same tea Steven Smith Teamaker offers as No. 8 Mao Feng Shui), Australian Lemon Myrtle, and American spearmint. They may have been taking liberties with the traditional Moroccan formula, but whatever, I was still game.

I followed the merchant’s suggested brewing method for this tea. I steeped 1 teaspoon of loose leaf material (I’m assuming that is about how much they put in those sachets) in 8 ounces of 190 F water for 3 minutes. I did not attempt any additional infusions. I just didn’t feel like it.

After infusion, the delicate yellow-green liquor produced mild aromas of spearmint, lemon myrtle, grass, hay, and flowers. In the mouth, I noticed a somewhat turbulent blend of lemon, grass, hay, vegetable, spearmint, and floral, nectar-like notes. The finish was slightly muddy, with a lingering blend of spearmint, grass, hay, and lemon myrtle.

Okay, so I didn’t hate this tea, but I didn’t really like it either. The best Moroccan mint teas I have had have hewed fairly closely to the traditional Moroccan formula. I can give Steven Smith Teamaker a few extra points for attempting something unique, but this really did not work for me. First, I think their No. 8 Mao Feng Shui is a more or less great Mao Feng. In my opinion, it is one of their best and most consistent green teas. Blending it with both lemon myrtle and spearmint obscured some of the more intriguing vegetal and floral aromas and flavors that I enjoyed so much. Second, one of the reasons that Maghrebi mint teas work so well is that the savory, vegetal gunpowder green base creates a really unique contrast with the sweetness of the spearmint. Here, the teamakers started with a green tea that I found to be slightly floral, sweet, and smooth and blended it with both spearmint and lemon myrtle. This added additional layers of sweetness and vegetal, herbal character on top of an already somewhat sweet and mildly vegetal base. So, rather than having two distinct components that ended up melding and working together, you ended up with three components with one or more similarities that fought one another for dominance and then merged together all at once. In my opinion, it just came off as sloppy and muddled with too many loose ends, and that is not what I typically look for in a blend of any kind.

I’ve had this a few times now, not because I’ve ever bought it, or ordered it in a restaurant, but because Smith sends it along with any order I seem to do.
Well, after a brief steep time I find it light, with an almost lemony mintiness to it.
And, its a cheap shot sipdown, as I have now knocked one of my numbers down with a single cup of tea.

A local cafe has this on offer and despite all the choices, this one is hard to beat. An absolutely gorgeous green, wonderful hot or cold. In summer they make a lemonade/Arnold Palmer-type drink with this, and it’s fantastic with ice. I’m fortunate that this company is semi-local to me, and intend to visit their brick-and-mortar store as soon as I make a trip out that way.

How odd, I could have sworn I reviewed this at some point but I guess not… ?

I’ve had this for a while and I find it really refreshing, an interesting twist on the traditional moroccan mint tea due to the addition of lemon myrtle. It’s a minty, lemony green tea! I absolutely recommend adding rock sugar to this, or sugar of some kind. This is excellent hot, but I think it would make an amazing iced tea as well. I really loved the Mao Feng Shui when I tried it plain as well. I wish S.S. would have another free shipping promotion soon :)

A little too mild for my taste – I would probably enjoy this if I had an upset stomach and couldn’t have a stronger tea and needed the mint. Not an “everyday tea” for me.

This was a very refreshing tea. The mrytle was a bit more than was strictly required, but was not so out of balance that it destroyed the tea. In general it was a nice well-rounded cup.