drank Marie-Antoinette by Nina's Paris
818 tasting notes

I so wanted to like this tea. I loved Grand Amour, and this one has such a cute name! Unfortunately, it wasn’t the tea for me. Once steeped, it tasted like an apple jolly rancher and very astringent black tea. I was surprised by the astringency because Grand Amour was so silky smooth. Not sure why this one was different. Oh well. I appreciated the sample, Laurent!

ashmanra

With a lot of French teas I find that if I cut the steep time by about a minute and take the temp down to about 195F it really smooths the base and takes out the astringency. I know you probably don’t have any more sample to steep this time, though. That is what I had to with sme of my Dammann Freres teas, but once I changed my parameters they were wonderful. Others were just fine at five minutes with boiling water.

Tealizzy

Ya, too bad I don’t have more sample to experiment with! I still don’t understand why grand amour was so different though. I used the same temp and steep time.

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ashmanra

With a lot of French teas I find that if I cut the steep time by about a minute and take the temp down to about 195F it really smooths the base and takes out the astringency. I know you probably don’t have any more sample to steep this time, though. That is what I had to with sme of my Dammann Freres teas, but once I changed my parameters they were wonderful. Others were just fine at five minutes with boiling water.

Tealizzy

Ya, too bad I don’t have more sample to experiment with! I still don’t understand why grand amour was so different though. I used the same temp and steep time.

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Another profile facelift! My tastes have changed a lot from when I first discovered loose leaf tea.

I can trace my tea journey back to October 2012, when I discovered DavidsTea. Before that, I had the occasional cup and enjoyed high tea at An Afternoon to Remember, which has since closed.

I went through a period of wanting to try all the teas, and was really into flavored teas, especially dessert blacks, but my tastes have substantially changed over time.

I still enjoy the occasional flavored black or rooibos, but I’m more into unflavored black teas right now and recently, puerh. Chinese black teas are amazing…with their notes of chocolate or sweet potato, who needs a flavored tea? I had a much steeper learning curve when it came to puerh. I used to dump out cups of puerh for tasting like leather. Now, I am really enjoying them. I think it took finding good quality puerh and steeping them gong fu style to really enjoy them.

I also, on occasion, enjoy a good oolong, white, or green tea.

Favorite tea companies right now include: Mandala, Teavivre, Butiki, Golden Moon, Lupicia, and DavidsTea (for teaware mostly).

Just a note: I don’t rate my teas numerically because my iPad doesn’t like the scroll bar. Maybe someday that will change…hint hint, steepster! ;)

P.S. My profile picture is of one of my 2 cats, Holly, who is a little princess but very photogenic, and she loves boxes, including those that bring me tea! :)

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San Francisco Bay Area

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