Dammann Frères
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Lala and I are tea buddies today. :) Dammann advent calendar, day 3. I actually already own this tea so I used my loose leaf for this tasting and will save the wrapped sachet for traveling.
The first time I had this it was a little intense for me and I never really went back to it, but I am happy for the excuse to pull it out again. Actually I like it a lot better this time. Who knows why, but it is working for me. Chestnutty and floral, but not overpoweringly so like before. Yay, now I feel better about drinking up the rest of my 50g of this (although this one won’t be a restock, as I’m not in love with it).
Preparation
There is no action that will sober you more about your tea collection than attempting to unpack it into something. I bought a small set of drawers just for my tea for the office and let’s just say there is still a cardboard box full of tea sitting next to it. I have a lot of tea! Somehow it didn’t seem like as much when it was just sitting in boxes. One thing I still have to deal with is the teas from my Instant Thé order, which all are in non-airtight bags, and of course I don’t have enough 50g tins. But if I do get tins from them they definitely won’t all fit in there!
Anyway, this tea. The scent is crazy and hard to parse. It definitely smells floral (orange blossom I guess), and I do get some chestnut, and perhaps a hint of caramel. In the flavor it is definitely floral and chestnutty. The florals are kind of odd; not definitively orange blossom, but intensely floral nonetheless. Perhaps its the chestnut that I am not used to that is giving this an oddness to it for me. It’s pretty good, but the flavor profile is a little out of my comfort zone. It probably doesn’t help that I’m suddenly feeling a bit ill this morning (nothing to do with the tea, it started before that; probably to do with getting up way to early this morning). Well hopefully tea will help me feel better!
Preparation
thank you shmiracles!
Sadly i drank this yesterday while cleaning the house and got so distracted with things that i failed to register the tea i was drinking. I have more left for this one so i’ll be trying it again. This was for sure a tasty treat since i drank it all! :)
Cold brew sipdown! I was supposed to sip this down on last Thursday before I went out of town but I ended up with an extra scoop of leaf. So I threw that in with a bit of Bali to amp the lychee and it turned out well. I prefer it with more lychee and less banana blossom, although the banana blossom is still there to give it a unique flavor. This was a fun one to try out but it’s nice to sip it down!
I am working toward a sipdown on this one too, and I’ve mostly been cold brewing it. But I forgot most of my sipdown teas at work this weekend (meant to bring them home so I could keep working on sipdowns) so I thought I would have a hot cup of this one.
I like the lychee in this one, and the Vietnamese green tea is fine (although a bit more grassy and vegetal than I would prefer), but the banana flower is… kinda weird. It’s not quite banana, more like a floral banana. So, weird. But it’s overall pretty tasty, even hot.
I think I enjoy this tea primarily because of the novelty of the Vietnamese green tea. I mean, the flavors are pretty nice too, but nothing that really captivates me. There is lychee, there is banana flower (so, like banana but not quite), and there is a pleasant green tea base. I should probably try cold steeping this one because it would probably come across really well. For a flavored green tea it is quite tasty, and that is saying something for me because flavored greens and I are not really that friendly anymore. But I do enjoy this one and it’s somewhat unusual flavor profiles.
Preparation
I didn’t order many green blends since I haven’t been as much of a fan of those lately, but the ones I do still like are Dammann, so I figured it wasn’t too much of a risk. This one was especially intriguing because it is definitely not a sencha… it’s actually green tea from Vietnam, which I don’t think I’ve ever tried before. Cool!
The dry leaf smells like lychees and a bit of banana, but not too much. Kind of reminds me of a smoothie made with banana, in that you can taste it but it’s not the main event. This is actually supposed to be banana flower, so I guess that makes sense. The flavor is definitely floral, as lychees tend to be fairly floral on their own, plus the addition of other, distinct florals blends well. The banana florals are pretty neat; I typically am not huge on banana flavoring, but these are nice and banana-y without overkill. This isn’t a mind-blowingly awesome tea, but it is tasty and I bet it would also make a killer iced tea. A nice, light fruity blend for when I’m in the mood.
Preparation
Does it have lotus? Vietnam related names seem to be code for lotus as an ingredient and I am just not a lotus person – but this sounds pretty awesome to me, as long as it is lotus free!
I don’t think there are any lotus flavors in here… None listed, and I didn’t get any that I recognized. It says only banana, and bamboo flowers!
This is another one of those, if I loved puerh I would be in love with this tea. Still, I definitely enjoy it all the same; it just takes me a bit to reorient my flavor and scent expectations for a puerh.
I love the caramel-cookie notes in this, and how rich and sweet it is. I would actually restock this one as I do like to keep one puerh around. I have no problem drinkinga big cup of this one, which is not something I can say about most puerhs.
Preparation
Another from my box of Dammann! I’m not usually one for flavored puerhs, or puerhs in general, but the chance to get only 50g of this (instead of the required 100g in store) was tempting enough to jump on. I mean, cookie, caramel, vanilla, and almond? How could I say no?
The dry leaf smells deliciously like all of those things. At first the scents coming from the brewing tea were mostly those as well, but slowly as it steeped longer more and more puerh notes were coming to the forefront. After steeping I find this to smell like a pretty woody puerh, like sawdust or oak bourbon barrels, without too much dirt/earth. As it cools more and more vanilla and caramel come out as well. Mmm caramel wood, haha.
I love Dammann’s caramel flavoring (see their Caramel Toffee tea, which I restocked in this order), and it is present in full force in this tea. So that works out pretty well for me. I can definitely taste the puerh, woody and even a tad minerally, but fortunately for me it is not too strong. I am definitely enjoying this tea; I guess I prefer my woody puerhs doused in caramel, vanilla, and a hint of amaretto-y almond. :)
Preparation
There are a lot of greens and oolongs in this section of Dammann teas in my cupboard. I think maybe because a lot of the black teas got consumed already. I do have a bit of this one (#68) left! Om nom, figgy deliciousness. I love this tea, although in keeping with my recent trends I rarely crave it since it is a single-flavor tea. But still, delicious.
Preparation
Speaking of simple teas that do one flavor and do it well, next we have this tea. I’m in love with many of DF’s fig-based teas, and this one is no exception. I love that it’s nice and figgy, smooth, well-balanced base tea, not too much going on. It would probably be fabulous iced but it’s also one of those teas that I don’t necessarily want to use it up that fast! But perhaps I will try it at some point. I would certainly consider keeping this tea around despite the fact I have many other figgy DF teas in my cupboard already!
Preparation
You know when you get a lot of tea at once and you don’t know where to start? That’s how I feel about my order from Instant Thé that came yesterday. I ordered 13 teas and got three free samples, bringing my cupboard up to 144.
I chose this one as the first from the box, as the whole box smells like fig (actually at least two of the teas I bought have fig in them, maybe more) and it was making me crave a fig tea. It unsurprisingly smells, and tastes, very figgy. If you like figs, you would love this tea because it is very intensely figgy. I love figs (fig season is perhaps my favorite fruit season), so this tea is AMAZING. Perhaps a bit more black figs than green figs, sweet but not too sweet, rich and delicious. So pleased with this one!
Preparation
At some point the description for this tea got update to something that I’m not sure where it came from (cause it’s not the DF website). It confused me at first, because it listed all tropical fruits and such. Because while it does have pineapple in it, it isn’t a tropical tea.
This one (#71) is very floral but with definite creamy-cookie notes from the chocolate, “cereals,” and coconut milk. It’s a wacky blend, honestly. I’m not sure it works quite as well as some of their other floral-fruit-biscuit blends, maybe because of the really odd florals (i.e., tomato flower). But it is tasty, nonetheless.
Preparation
Next up, a stroll through the Tuileries. I wish!
This is such a unique tea. Some things you might expect to go together: pineapple and coconut (ok), cereals and chocolate (sure), a variety of florals (yeah [but tomato blossom?]), but then put all of them together on a green oolong? Weird. But it works. When you drink it, it’s impossible to really pinpoint what it tastes like. Nevertheless, I like it, and it’s my kind of tea.
Preparation
That is a bizarre combination and yet one that sounds very appealing to me too (except wtf tomato blossom).
I wonder if savory garden scents and flavors are going to be over-the-top trendy for a while. Lots of co-workers are into Scentsy stuff and they have a “Tomato Vine” … uh, not a candle, what do you call them? smelly thing, I guess … that was indeed, spot on for aroma.
That would be so weird. I suppose I’d be OK with my kitchen smelling like tomato vines, but my place is so tiny the whole apartment would smell like tomato vines!
And this tea sounds so interesting, but “cereals” means it’s a no for me. Darnit! :)
There were a few teas I had to buy at Dammann when I was there, and they were all three of the “Jardin” teas: des Tuileries, du Trocadero, and du Luxembourg. They are all green oolong blends, which I haven’t had from Dammann before but I trust them to make awesome. They are also pretty pricey, relative to their teas.
This afternoon I sniffed all of them and they all smelled delicious, but this one called to me. It has a lot going on, but one of the main scents I got is somewhat cookie-like, which must be the combination of chocolate and cereals, and perhaps the coconut milk. Then of course some fruitiness (pineapple) and a large amount of florals (tiare, tomato and cherry flower). I had to look up tiare, but its a type of gardenia.
The flavor was complex and quite tasty. All of those notes, plus, amazingly a bit of floral, buttery green oolong peeking through. It is, as I like to say, very French, which means all the flavors blend so well together they are hard to pick apart, and I often don’t really want to. They all work so well together. I can’t wait to try the others!
orange blossom & chestnut? Wow!
That sure sounds like a wonderful combination!