Cocotte

OMG!

Seriously when I smelled this I thought to myself am I smelling tomato and flowers!? How strange! Indeed, I was! This is just about finished with the infusion. And I can’t wait to drink tea with tomato in it! LOL

The fresh tomato from the vine type scent intensifies as it steeps.

You know how sometimes tomatoes from the vine can have a peppery type taste to the skin? This kind of reminds me of that at first sip.

As I continue to sip there is a bit of bitterness to it but it almost seems to fit.I’m thinking there is a bit too much perfume/flower taste to it and I would have rather there been more sweet cherry tomato taste. Yes…I will say that again…MORE TOMATO…less flower! :)

All-in-All this tea interests me. I like the concept. I think I like the concept a bit more than the taste but I am liking the taste a little, too.

This rating may change but for now I will go with this one…I like it, I want to like it more, I like the idea…it’s ok so far.

Ok, I think I have found the diabolical twin of Wedding Impérial :it’s a capricious tea…. grrrr This is my THIRD steep already and I have the eyes focused on the clock.
I’ll stop at 2 minutes, not more !
However we should use a very small amount of loose leaf otherwise it turns bitter.
Awwwww yes ! 2 minutes are fine !

Let’s back to the beginning : Cocotte is a tea with tomatoes, I would say flowering tomatoes and tomatoes + lemon on a darjeeling base.
The dry leaf is admirable because of course very original and because it smells like a garden of tomatoes and fresh GOOD tomatoes (I mention good because often now there are just stupid tomatoes on the market, without any taste (bref des tomates franchement dégueulasses- no other way to say :) ) – These tomatoes are tomatoes.
I was hesitant about how to prepare this tea especially because normally I add a rock of brown crystal sugar and with this kind of flavour, I was unsure.
Anyway Tomato is a fruit and gets naturally sugar so I finally added my rock of sugar.
After my brewing adventures, I have to say 2 min are perfect for me, the tea is just amazing, delicious and so original.A slight astringency remains but tolerable.It tastes like fresh tomatoes with a flowery taste and a hint of lemon.

I think I need to continue to play around this tea because maybe the tea base is not my favorite and it may count in the way I would prepare the tea next time (by a potential colder brew) but really I am happy to have bought this tea.

I may have to drink this several times before I come to any conclusions. The dry aroma really highlights the tomato. Pretend that you are in a tomato garden and you can smell the more distant odor of basil and green bell peppers. And tea, of course.

The French store, from which I ordered this says that: “Many great things are born from the most outrageous ideas. So for which reason should a tea not be perfumed by the lush perfume of tomatoes? Flavor: Tomato and lemon. Base: Darjeeling.”

Sipping my first cup, I am having a bit of cognitive dissonance. This tea is so very summer salad and at the same time so very much a black tea. I could see it working more with a green tea, but I also think I need some time to lean into this tea. I might add a bit o’ sugar next time. I think that I am going to like it because now that the tea is finished, I want to do an immediate second steep.

I feel that I ate a very juicy and ripe tomato that was grown in a garden in the full summer. Some green bell pepper and maybe some basil were added. A couple of grains of salt and black pepper were sprinkled over it and then a squeeze of lemon juice.. And then some caffeine steroids were added.

Gratitude to The O Dor for their interesting ideas and I suspect that this tea will gain more points as I drink it more. I don’t think it’s for tea purists, but it’s probably for anyone who likes something different. It’s piquant!

EDIT:
This tea is very tricky, fussy, and moody although it’s worth it if you can get it right. Steeped too long, and it’s bitter quickly. 2 minutes and 45 seconds is perfect for me. It can be very astringent. It is highly reminiscent of gazpacho. It’s worth pursuing to try to get it right, in spite of its moodiness.

This is the famous tomato tea, which I have been intrigued by for ages and never been able to find on stock even in places which usually have it on stock – who knew that tomato tea sold out? Ysaurella came to the rescue and sent me this sample and I could (finally!) try it. Thank you, Ysaurella!

This is a very unexpected tea : flavoured darjeeling, with tomato and lemon. Recently I was talking of vegetables which fruits (tomato, pumpkins, peppers, avocados, etc) and vegetables which are fruits (rhubarb). Tomato is indeed a fruit, in my country a popular jam is made with tomatoes and I know someone who snacks on tomatoes as if they were apples (or carrots, now I think of it). So of course, tomato should have a chance to be something more. And it is very typical of Thé-o-dor teas that they experiment with it (and also typical that they could make it work).

I am not usually a fan of darjeeling and apart from Arya Rose d´Himalaya I do not recall ever having a flavoured darjeeling. I was very very careful brewing this, water was perhaps a smidgeon too cold, and used a timer for 2 and a half minutes. It was still a bit astringent, though IMO a desirable level of astringent for the flavours – but this is going to be indeed a tricky tricky tea.

The dry leaf is beautiful, and smells of hay-ish tea, lemon and tomato with the lemon being more noticeable than the tomato. While brewing the scent changes, the ripe tomato becomes the predominant flavour and I worried I was going to like this after all. The liquour thankfully has a more subdued, less liquid somehow (oh the irony), tomato note, lemon becames again noticeable. The non-verbal parts of my brain like it and do not care what it is. The verbal ones are still trying to figure out how came this works, but works indeed.

This is the strangest tea I ever tried, and amazingly it is good. It tastes not like an experiment or something meant to just shock, but well, it tastes perfectly finished, an interesting very eccentric tea which is so smart.

Doulton’s Shakespeare: A Tasting Note in 5 Acts
Act II scene 1

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber’d here
While these visions did appear.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V scene 2

Enter Puck: the “shrewd and knavish sprite” (Act II scene 1) from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It truly is an outrageous tea that constantly catches me by surprise. I also think that it’ll be one of the most memorable “characters” from this tea box.

I went through the wonderful dilemma of picking out my morning tea with only the thought that I must have one of my “bookshelf” tea samples. When I received Doulton’s Shakespeare box it smelled absolutely divine, but there were some very bold teas that I was concerned might taint my entire tea cupboard. Therefore I took the box to my bedroom and took the smelliest of the teas and distributed them amongst the books on two of my bookshelves. So not only does my bedroom smell marvelous, but it’s like a mini treasure hunt when I decide that I want an extra-fragrant tea. The two packets that I pulled out this morning were Cocotte and a Lapsang Souchong. The Cocotte looked like a pretty and floral black tea which better suited my mood this morning. Little did I know what a trickster tea I had in my hands.

I pop open the baggie and take a sniff. What the hell?!?! This is not what I was expecting by a long shot. I couldn’t even put a finger on the scents: a sort of earthy maybe even vinegary smell. But no, vinegar isn’t right but it’s something that I should know. I stop everything and hop online to look this mysterious tea up on Steepster. Holy Oberon: this is the infamous tomato tea! The pieces of the olfactory puzzle snap into place. The mysterious not-vinegar smell is tomato. I’m not a huge tomato fan, but I’m excited to try this and share my impressions. And maybe I’ll finally get a chance to use some of the darker/nastier Shakespeare ideas that I’ve had for teas that I don’t like.

I steeped the leaves for just under 3 minutes and I’m glad that I didn’t go further: there was an astringency there that was on the verge of being too much. What a bizarre tea! For me it is like someone took an entire tomato plant (including the dirt-covered roots) and turned it into a tea. It’s a tea that demands attention. I keep expecting to be offended with every sip, but as I taste and swallow the tea it just absolutely intrigues me. This is bizarre, but in a good way.

I shortened the second steep to a bit over 2 minutes and I like it better. I get more of a sense of the Darjeeling. I’m even really curious as to what this tea would be like cold brewed. I’m also flummoxed as to how to rate this. It’s better than Nice Enough, but there was no Teagasm. I think that I shall call it a Dream. Neither a good nor bad dream, but it is so unique that it will be very memorable. And I applaud it loudly.

I’m finally getting around to trying this one and I hope I don’t like it. I say that because it is no longer on the The O Dor web site and I haven’t heard of anyone else trying to do a tomato tea.

If I do like it, it will be the sort of thing I hoard until the end of time. Or at least until The O Dor brings it back.

I would not necessarily have identified this as a darjeeling without reading the existing notes because the leaves in the tin smell fairly strongly of tomato and lemon. I really can’t smell the tea itself.

Various notes mention a tendency toward bitterness, which must be a function of the tomato and citrus rather than the underlying tea — I’ve never had a bitterness issue steeping darjeeling for 3 minutes. Since this is apparently not the most forgiving tea, and because I can find no recommended steeping instructions for it from The O Dor on the tin or elsewhere, I’m going to follow Ysaurella’s recommendation and steep it at 190F for only 2 minutes as a starting point.

The steeped tea is a coppery amber color, darker than I expected. And it definitely smells like tomatoes!

But what’s great about this, at least for me, is that it’s the essence of tomato without the acidity, or the pulpiness, or any of the other things that can be unpleasant about tomatoes if they aren’t gorgeously ripe, sweet, and juicy. Not that this really tastes like gorgeous, ripe, sweet, juicy tomatoes either. I am not sure how they managed this, but it’s kind of like they added the smallest amount of tomato possible that could provide enough flavor so that it’s recognizable, but not so much that it tastes like spaghetti sauce. There’s a floral essence as well, which keeps the tomato from being too heavy.

Fascinating and unique. I can’t say it’s my favorite thing ever, but it’s pretty amazing in how it accomplishes what it sets out to do.

I’m sharing this with my BFF because it’s tomato tea.

It’s so weird. So so weird. Tomatoey. A bit lemony. Floral. A bit weirdly mentholy astringent. My BFF says it’s like drinking the remaining liquid in the bottom of a salad bowl, with the tomato seeds and stuff. Or tomato stems. So green.

Weird.

So, uhh, thanks for the sample MissB! :)

Wow. Definitely one of the most unusual teas I’ve tried, and one I’ve wanted to try for a while. Can it really smell, taste, like fresh tomatoes? Yes, yes it does. It brings me back to living at the Salt Spring Centre of Yoga as a karma yogi a few years back, where everything we ate or made for the guests came out of the garden. Tomatoes and beans were the huge crops that year, with more than a handful of varietals of each. I learned how to save and process the seeds there, and sent a bunch to my son’s Grandmother for her to try out in her own garden. This smell, flavor, feeling… reminds me of processing those seeds. Mushing up the tomatoes not fit for eating in a huge tub of water, letting them ‘process’ for a day or two so that the seeds rose to the top of the water, skimming the seeds off and dumping the rest of the bucket in the compost pile, and then carefully arranging the seeds on screens to dry in the greenhouse.

Yes, this tea reminds me of all of that.

There’s also something else in the mix. Lemon, perhaps? It’s faint, and adds a bit of whimsy to it, which may be the first time I’ve ever described a tea as whimsical. Super fun!

Thank you to Ysurella for sharing this with me!

1.5 tsp in 12 oz.