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This is definitely a magnificent, well balanced cuppa of quality tea I’d expect from our favorite brothers Mariage. The dry leaves have a very strong, intoxicating smell, like a shot of krupnik (a spiced honey liquor from my homeland) diluted with Amaretto.. smells almost like it has alcohol. Made me think I’m about to get drunk brewing a bit of Amaretto with maraschino cherries or some other divinely sweet desert drink.

The brewed tea loses the “alcohol” scent but the almond/spiced honey fragrance is joined by some smashed red berries, I’d say closest to strawberries and dark brandied cherries. One of the “spices” is definitely mahlab, which gives that bitter almond & cherry flavor. That part brought me back to Egypt the moment I took my first sip, but in some European-style cafe in Cairo next to a hookah/sheesha bar. I can’t quite pinpoint the other spices (saffron? black sesame?), but they are very well balanced, neither muting the concert of sweet honey with cherry amaretto nor fading into the background.

The brewing suggestion was 3-5 minutes at 95C water, 2.5g/20cl. I found that 200F, 2tsp/300ml at 3 minutes works best for me, as some bitter notes from the mahlab start becoming more pronounced at 5 minutes. 4 minutes and I already needed some sweetener to bring it back to balance, but the flavor was a bit more robust. When I brewed a cup for my mom at her house, I used freshly boiled water (no precise kettle) I’m guessing was around 205-210F for 4 minutes and it definitely needed sweetener.

Finicky and you’ll have to play around with the temps to get it just right for yourself, but when you nail it, it’s a real treat. Also got mine fresh direct from Mariage Freres, so maybe the longer steeping times are for leaves that have been sitting around for a little while.

A solid but otherwise mostly unremarkable oolong after the 2nd or 3rd steeping. The leaves do have a lot of patience, however, so it lasts a long time. The first few infusions have some aspects of note, however.

Infusion 1 – whereas the dry leaves have that strong berry aroma, once brewed it changes to more of semi-sweet greens, like black cherry leaves, while the liquor’s aroma is similar but milder. The taste is of a light oolong with notes of Cap’n Crunch berries. Don’t add lemon to this one boys and girls, as it brightens it up but puts some astringency in the spotlight.

Infusion 2 – the black cherry leaf aromas have been replaced by fresher barely-sweet notes, a bit like flower greens. And while the liquor smells a bit like a distant draft coming from a hot and humid floral greenhouse, the flavor is pleasant like stepping inside said greenhouse. The berries are gone now. This is a berry-less greenhouse ;-) Nice easy sip, no adulteration needed, and would make a good base for lighter or mellow iced teas.

Once you get past 3 steepings, it has incredible patience and keeps on producing cup after cup, but nothing remarkable to note. I got to infusion 7 at around 10 minutes before I got the first hints of bitterness or astringency. Looking at the photos, #7 still looks like the third steeping, and until I line them up side-by-side next time I believe the flavor profile was pretty consistent after #3 as well.

There are several reasons why this tasty oolong deserves such a high score. Any of them taken alone would have justified an 81-90 but combined this pushes it into the 90’s for me.

First, DO expect vanilla. Lots of it. Particularly on the first infusion. But even with the tons of vanilla, you can still taste the oolong so it’s not like drinking a pure vanilla shake. The liquor is incredibly smooth and has a creamy mouthfeel, I suppose hence the name silk dragon. Once you add any kind of sweetener (I like stevia leaves or raw honey), then the first infusion is pretty much a vanilla eden. What an awesome desert. That alone, however, would have only put the tea into my 75-79 score range, as I make my own fresh vanilla extract and can slap some into anything for flavor and aroma, although this does cut down the cost of it dramatically.

Next, this tea has a lot of patience. I’m on the 5th infusion and it still tastes wonderful. I’ll do a side-by-side tasting of multiple steepings for further comparison later, I didn’t save any from the previous infusions because it was very tasty. The vanilla hasn’t faded away, although maybe the oolong is coming through a bit more prominently now. Since you can also make so much tea from the leaves, I have found an awesome use for this as well — combine a bunch of steepings into a container, add some sweetener of choice, let it sit in the fridge overnight, filter it, then carefully run it through the sodastream. Boom, cream soda tea. From 2-3 tsp of leaves I can make a liter of this tasty beverage, and unlike some other teas which carbonate poorly, there is no astringency or bitterness for the bubbles to highlight so it really does become like a cream soda to me, minus any of those calories.

This is also my new vanilla blender for teas. Any time I want vanilla in something, I’ll reach for this (first I need to buy a supply, as I have now finished the sample I ordered). There are several reasons why it goes into blends so well. One, unlike vanilla blacks, greens and rooibos, the oolong is so mellow that it does not fight or overpower even the most delicate of nuances from other teas. Unlike vanilla whites, i’m not paying white tea prices for something to blend into other teas. My favorite blend so far: 1 part Slik Dragon, 1 part Bourgeons De Yunnan from Palais des Thes (any good Dian Hong will do), and 1 part Spice of Life from Teavana (still trying to replicate that using fresh nuts & spices). Makes a 10-12oz cup, add 1 tsp raw honey and you have yourself a nutty vanilla creme brulee in a cup. OMG lovely.

At the lower-mid scale of my ‘standard cuppa’. It might have gotten a higher score from me a year ago when I was just starting out with the wonderful world of tea.

Don’t get me wrong, and I still recommend this for making blends, but I have been spoiled by several seasonal/holiday blends and now this tends to fall short, and requires a bit of modification to bring it back up to my new taste preferences.

My recommendation is to add a little Vietnamese cinnamon to boost that component, a little fresh lemon zest or orange peel for more bitters to balance the profile, and a few cloves, this augments it sufficiently to bring it back to the good/awesome level and use it with blends that scream for mulling spices.

Oh gawd please no. There are some things in life you just can’t “un-taste”, and this is one of them. It smells okay, a lot of anise/licorice, so I thought it would make a good blend with some other teas, but once brewed it was horrific. The liquor tastes like a musky, stagnant pool of muddy water in the Amazon filled with fire ant poo and rotting tree bark.

Not that I have ever tasted musky, muddy, stagnant water from the Amazon filled with fire ant poo and rotting tree bark, but I imagine it would be pretty close to this brew.

At first when I opened the package and took a whiff, I thought “okay, another unremarkable refill for my dianghong gong fu tin”. I kinda chuckle thinking back to that first impression now.

This tea brews an impressively dark, bold, rich and full bodied liquor that is incredibly smooth and mellow. How smooth? Like a glass of warmed Remy Martin XO (not quite a Louis XIII), half-way through the swallowing process it actually vanishes from your mouth. Really that smooth and zero astringency, to the point where I felt like I was swallowing liquid aromatic air as it washed down the back of the mouth.

That’s not to say it doesn’t have strong flavor or aromas. No grass or straw, Palais des Thes says truffles, but I would characterize it more like cocoa-leather. Absolutely as smooth as can be, this is better than many jinya dianhongs I’ve tried before. This is something I will be restocking for sure.

Here’s the bonus. For a black tea it has incredible patience. The second western-style steeping was just as good, rich, and full bodied as the first, no joke. A third started to even reveal some toasted wood and apple tree bark, but I stopped there because I could feel some astringency appearing in the third infusion. If you like the apple/cider/woody side, I have found some short 45-60 second infusions with a higher leaf-water ratio works well to accentuate those, but I love the rich/dark/smooth brew so I just keep doing it that way.

TWG finally managed to let me down, wow. I picked this up from Dean & Deluca instead of a TWG salon, just because I was there and I wanted to try a few new TWGs.

Looks like a shoumei white, leaves with no buds and brews fairly dark. This makes sense as well, since the characteristic TWG floral blend you find in a lot of their other main teas is present and pairs well with the lightly fruity crispness of the lower quality showmei whites. The strength of the floral and berry notes is dialed way down to make room for the tea to come through, but in my opinion is still too strong and the white tea is too low a grade to warrant their name being on the label or to even notice this is much of a tea at all. I think this is one of those “mass market/appeal/bulk” teas some larger firms pump out to milk their brand value to appease the accountants and shareholders, while keeping a portfolio of much better single-estate and higher quality blends to keep the connoisseurs and fans attached.

I’ll finish what I have, strip the label and keep the double-lid tin for future teas I buy and bring home from their tea rooms, but unless I find some for darn cheap it probably won’t make its way back into my collection.

I’m a bit conflicted on this oddball. It’s at the very top of my “good cuppa” because I keep it regularly stocked, but not as a tea. Instead I use this as a blender to combine with other teas whenever I want some caramelized nuts in something.

It really has very little tea leaves in it, which always makes me feel a bit gullible for spending tea prices on it, but I haven’t been able to replicate the flavor profile with raw ingredients from the store. What it does have, however, is an abundance of feel-good sweet toasted almond goodness with nutty vanilla and a hint of citrus. I add it mostly to black teas (with a quality dianhong it is extremely tasty and doesn’t fight the flavors!) but have been experimenting with some rooibos as well. When blended, I have found the limit being around 4 minutes at 200 F, even though the recommended time is 2 minutes. If overbrewed by accident though, the citrus peels will release a whole ton of bitter notes, which makes it a multi-step process to blend with rooibos well.

I’d rank it in my “awesome cuppa” 81-99 category but 1) it doesn’t do much for me straight as a tea, and 2) even when I blend it, it absolutely requires some kind of sweetener to bring out the nutty goodness, like some raw honey, sugarcane juice, or stevia leaves. Otherwise it just kinda muddles the flavor, and I find it difficult to give a top rating to something I can’t enjoy unadulterated as well.

Overall, worth keeping at least a small tin of, and adding to some of your favorites to bring them into new and interesting places.

I got a tin of this by accident – thought I had ordered the Marco Polo black while trying to find a suitable alternative to my favorite TWG 1837 Black, which I usually pick up while on business trips in Asia. I was not disappointed one bit, however, once I opened the tin and took that first whiff of the leaves. The ripe and dark berry smell was magic!! Blueberries, blackberries, elderberries, black raspberries, loganberries.. all muddled with some flower blossoms… but, I thought.. will this go as well with green tea as with black?

Surprisingly well, it appears. There are two reasons this doesn’t get a 90+ score from me, however. The liquor has a lot more floral notes to compliment the berries when compared to my beloved 1837 black, which has caramel notes instead of floral. However, this is not a terribble thing because sometimes I want a bit more flowers in my berry-green but not jasmine, and this tea hits the spot perfectly. The second reason it’s not a 90+ is that I only really get 2 solid infusions out of this at 175 (2 mins, 1 min), and they need to be combined post-brew into 1 batch for a good balance. The first infusion has the green tea flavor way too faint, and by the second steeping the floral notes are mostly gone and berry notes completely gone. A third steeping (at 2 mins) produces a mild, weak green tea. I haven’t taken this beyond 3 infusions.

I can’t wait to try the Marco Polo black tea after this though…

OK I don’t like the peach stuff too much, too fruity for me, but I bought a tin of this as a gift for someone who does, but then they moved and I was stuck with it. So then I thought I’d keep it around for blending with other teas, as I don’t typically drink the tisanes, except those made with rooibos.

I’ve tried it with a bunch of other teas. Berry teas, nutty teas, spicy teas, dark & strong teas, light and crisp teas… the peach from this overwhelms most of them even at a 3:1 ratio. It’s not gross or to the point I’d throw it away, I’m sure in the summer it will help make awesome iced teas.

The good news: this tin will last me forever and ever. If you looove peaches, this will make a good tisane or blender for you, especially iced. If you just kinda like them, it might be a bit much.