Nina's Paris

Bye bye Japon, you will be missed. I love you….you must come and visit again soon.

Very stressful times for me right now…dealing with someone who is being blatantly passive aggressive with me, and has some super annoying habits. Today is my Friday, so I’m at the end of my rope with this last work week.

So, this is the tea I made, and ahhhhh……..yes! Love you Nina’s Japon! I need to get more of you!

Thanks for VariaTEA for sending more of this along for me. I really really like this tea.

Sipdown!

Sad to see the last of this go. It’s definitely one I want to get my hands on in larger quantities.

It’s genmai cha, it’s sweet, it’s oh so yummy and amazing. See my other note for more details.

Ummmm, yum? This is some seriously tasty tea, and everything I expected it to be, really. I’m just sad that I only have one more serving left, though hoping for a resteep with tonight’s brew.

Warm and toasty from the genmai cha, but also warm from the caramel as well. Almost like burnt sugar. This is probably my favourite genmai cha ever!

Would I recommend this to a friend? Heck YES!

A super big thanks to Cavocorax for sending a few teaspoons my way.

My first genmaicha! & probably a good one for me since I prefer blacks to greens and this one is a mix. I needed some caffeine this afternoon, headache trying to come on and wanting to persuade it to leave… hopefully this and some tyelnol will do the trick! & I’ve seen so many great reviews of this one lately that I had to give it a try.

Dry leaf this one doesn’t do much for me.. Nutty and faintly sweet.

Steeped this smells nutty and almost like freshly popped corn, minus the butter. I get nutty, toasted something… not sure what to describe it as & I assume it’s the rice coming through. Not really getting the vanilla or caramel. The green and black teas are balanced nicely and don’t overpower each other. I don’t get the vegetal flavor of the green.. a plus for me as I’m still trying to acquire a taste for greens.

Oh… a touch of raw sugar part way through my cup and now I get caramel, mixed with that toasty roasty flavor … now I get the obsession.. Much better ! I should have tried that sooner since I generally like at least a pinch of sugar in each cup.

I have to say this one surprised me a bit. I thought it was going to be too different for me and I could only imagine it having a smoky flavor which I wasn’t sure about. The roasted goodness, combined with the sweet caramel = Yum!

Thanks MIssB for sending a bit of this my way! I likely wouldn’t have picked this one out for a long while on my own. I’m so glad to have been treated to it :)

This one was sent my way from Lala. This is also a backlog from last night.

I have to say that even though this was nice, I much prefer Love Life from H&S. It’s not completely the same tea but it’s much more subtle. The flavouring here was just a touch too strong for the green base. I’m happy to have been able to try it out though. Thanks Lala!

Well I definitely have an obsession. Last night, I dreamed that I drank this tea and didn’t like it, and I was so disappointed for not liking it because I’d wanted to like it so badly. Then I woke up and realized it was a dream LOL.

I poured the entire sample the ever so wonderful and generous JustJames sent me into my basket, and steeped for four minutes. I took some time to smell the tea after it had brewed. I could definitely pick up on the fruit, and although I don’t know that I would have immediately identified it as red current and raspberry, it definitely didn’t smell like the typical cacophony of fruit you might find in French tea (stone fruit etc). The raspberry is very clear in the sip though, and so is the base. I can’t say I’m terribly familiar with the taste of red current, although the fruit didn’t taste entirely of raspberry to me, so I imagine it was there. I got a bit of a generically sweet and vanilla end-sip before the relatively strong flavour of the base, which sort of suggests to me that I should have shortened the steeping time by a touch. I’m not sure that I necessarily got caramel though, but that might have been my own rock sugar obliterating that a bit.

I can really imagine myself enjoying the sweet raspberry deliciousness during the summer months. I still think I’m slightly more wowed by Pour Maman, but this would probably make it into an order. That order will probably be placed soon though, but I need to get through some of my h and s teas first. But yeah, definitely a winner here.

Thanks again, JustJames, for not only very generously sending me these samples, but for putting differently shaped/different variations/patterns of raised stickers on them so I could tell which tea was which without any sighted assistance at all! The world is a better place because you’re in it.

i did something different with this one tonight, though i don’t know what. however- the point could be made that the world is a better place with a heapload of stress hauled off my shoulder? maybe the world simply tastes sweeter….

tonight i get a hint of citrus in the tea base which gives a very nice spin to the strawberry. lovely lovely. not my favourite nina’s, but still great.

back to work.

the smell of the dry leaf is a decadent cocoa-caramel enhanced coffee flavor…just my definition of comfort. if ever a lion wanted to lure me into his den, this aroma would do the trick.

steeps up a nice, gorgeous golden-orange ‘marigold’ color….how enchanting! Japon smells like a sumptuous genmaicha/hojicha with slight caramel & chocolate notes reminiscent of a comforting Café Francais instant coffee.

there’s a rich, buttery caramel finish on the crispy toasted rice and the teeny popcorn bits, which are so cute!

the unmistakable toasty brown rice quality is very evident in the aroma & the sip. yay! this is the real deal, and any genmaicha enthusiast would love this.

having drank a significant portion of this unadulterated, it must come as no surprise that i’m wondering what this would be like with just a dusting of sugar! ;p

surely enough, it pops the caramel beautifully….wow! this is one special genmaicha….

this is so decadent (and yet, calorie-free!) that i’m going to brew up another cup. i regret nothing.

Nina’s Paris….you have a fan in me.

I think I figured this one out. Finally, when there is just one serving left. Ha ha, that is how it always works out.

1.5 tsp for a 8 oz mug, 3-4 pieces of brown rock sugar, 190F (definitely hotter than what would be recommended for a green), 1-1.5 minutes.

That is all.

Well I just sing the praises of about every Nina’s Tea I have tried. I guess it had to come to an end at some time. This one just didn’t knock my socks off like most of the other ones. It is still good, maybe its OK, but I was a bit disappointed. Really just disappointed in all of my excitement and not in the tea itself.

This one smelled like a gentle green tea with strawberry flavours. It was a mix of real strawberry and strawberry flavouring. There was real strawberry pieces in the blend.

The taste is just a bit lacklustre to me, maybe it is just too gentle. I am getting a very soft green tea taste. It is smooth, slightly sweet, no vegetal flavours at all, no astringency. Maybe there is a bit of a hay taste, I would associate that more to white teas than green. There is also a strawberry taste. Slightly sweet, mostly red berry tasting. This tea tastes very mild to me.

I think next time I will try a bit more tea and a bit longer steep time.

Sipdown #44, which I drank earlier today. This is another tea from Lala, thank you!
Although I tend to prefer my green teas straight, this was tastefully done & the strawberry flavor especially was nice. I haven’t had the best of luck with Nina’s teas, but I wanted to try them, so I’m happy to report that this one had no ill effects on me!

This tea is really well done. In teas with vanilla and other flavours, I feel the vanilla mostly comes through in the softening of the other flavours. The raspberry and red currant work well with the base tea, but there’s no mistaking them. I’m not so sure I’m getting caramel, but there is a sweetness in the sip that could be it.

Another from VariaTEA, and since she suggested I try this and Caramel-Toffee one after the other, I figured I may as well. She has yet to lead me astray. Also, I really appreciate the average steep time and temperature feature on Steepster.

I am slightly preferring this tea over the last. The base seems to work a bit better with the flavouring here. The caramel seems softer, perhaps due to the vanilla. I’m excited I have some of this en route to experiment more with.

Thanks VariaTEA!

Sipdown (197/201)!

Yeah, I took the easy sipdown. I’ve been in lots of mouth pain all afternoon and just wanted something toasty, roasty, and creamy to washdown the pain medication with. I know that I’ll meet this tea again, whether that’s sooner or later, so why not make it this one?

I brewed it up like Stacy had suggested ad used boiling water for a minute. Honestly? It doesn’t really change the delicious taste a whole lot for me. I’ll have to try her steeping suggestion some other time for a more proper/traditional Genmaicha and see if there’s a noticeable change.

I also went and pulled out all the teas that are currently my favourite black blends, and either tomorrow or the day after will be a day for just my favourite black teas, since I’ve been drinking a whole lot of everything lately. That sounds like a good way to spend a day!

Scary close to a sipdown on this one. There’s enough left for one cup – so I’m really going to have to postpone/draw that out, despite the easy sipdown being tempting.

It was about 2 AM when I decided that I just had to drink this and I don’t got a second regret it because it was a warm, smooth comforting cup of caramel, vanilla, and yummy puffed wheat. I’m not sure if this has ruined Genmaicha for me nearly as much as it has for VariaTEA but it certainly has done a number on me.

Now, what I do regret a little is deciding to make peanut butter cookies at the same time as I made this tea. 2 AM baking is not necessarily the best or brightest idea.

…And so concludes yesterday’s backlog.

Today I am being a tea pushover. Why? Because VariaTEA told me to drink this, so I did. Yup – you can call me the whipped one in this tea drinking relationship. Which I of course mean in the nicest way possible. I don’t think it needs to be said that I got this one from her as well – she’s the Nina’s Japon dealer to us all.

Anyway, I could probably go on to great length about this one but it’s all been done before. I’ll just summarize by saying: yes, I’m on the Nina’s Japon loving bandwagon. I taste roasty toasty Genmaicha followed by delicious and smooth caramel and vanilla. Amazing – though I honestly had no doubts it wouldn’t be. Well, onto the shopping list. I need more!

What else do I need to say? It’s good. Damn good.

This cup came from Jennkay: thank you! I’ve really been wanting to try some Nina’s teas and this will be my first one.

As it brews this smells like…breakfast cereal? Kind of odd but it’s not a bad smell. Maybe that’s what happens when you mix rooibos and berries, because I noted something similar with the Provence Rooibos I got from MissB. The taste is like freeze-dried strawberries, and there’s a creaminess to the mouthfeel and the flavor. I’d be interested to taste the other zodiac blends! I wonder if my favorite would be mine (Cancer)? :)

ETA: This is now a sipdown as I gave the last cup to mom.

Sipdown #3(11) = 380
I really want to like this tea, because it tastes delicious!
Sadly, I only took a few sips, because unexpectedly my tongue started it’s reaction, & I don’t know if it’s a chemical thing, or an allergy, but I could feel my tongue & lower lip puffing up a little, & the start of an unhappy sensation all the way down to my gut.
I really hate being overly sensitive sometimes.
But I’ve learned that no matter how tasty a tea is, I will regret drinking it if I don’t listen to these cues, so down the drain it went…sigh…
I’d still like to thank Lala for the sample. :)

Another sipdown! This is a sample sent to me from Lala, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to try this one. The main flavor I got from this is apple, & it was lovely & juicy.

Thank you VariaTEA for sending me a sample of this one. I know it’s one of your favorites, and it is so kind of you to share it with so many of us.
LOL this isn’t quite what I was expecting. I really need to read up on the description of the tea BEFORE I decide what it should be. I really thought this was going to be caramal, vanilla, genmaicha. Ummm Dex, the first ingredient is black tea – RIGHT got it.
Regardless of what I thought it was going to be, this does not disappoint in what it is. Caramel, vanilla, dessert black tea. I’m not getting any of the toasted rice, or sencha notes.
I really understand why VariaTEA is so excited about this. It’s a really good one. Thank you so much for sharing. :))

Sipdown (204)!

When I had tea with Lala earlier this month, she brought a whole bunch of extra samples for me, including several from Nina’s Paris that I’ve been excited to try. I decided to make my very first Nina’s Paris tea this one. It was gonna be Nina’s Japon from VariaTEA except I realized I really was in more of a fruity black mood today, and this was in my sample drawer calling out to me.

Dry, I don’t get a whole lot from this. Maybe a little peach/apricot but nothing crazy distinct. My steeping parameters were the whole sample (a little more than 1 1/2 tsp.) steeped in boiling water for four minutes. Steeped up, the smell is very aromatic with thick, fat juicy notes of peach and apricot – though not a ton of apple. very excited to be trying this out.

Mmmm, the taste is definitely a very rich fruit tea like I was wanting. Again, I’m not getting a whole lot of apple (maybe a little) but I do get a very smooth vanilla/peach flavour with a brilliant black base and some milder notes of apricot. There’s not even a touch of astringency or bitterness – and despite a seemingly absent apple that feels well balanced with enough dimension. I honestly think if there was a strong presence of apple that might be a little too much going on – that or it’d be like a fruit cocktail.

Heh, it was even sweet enough to make my teeth sore again. Which is the first time they’ve severely acted up since getting my pain medications from the dentist. So… More pain killers for me!

Also, if it weren’t for the fact the pain killers I just took were the first ones all day then I might think I was pretty severely tripping balls because my landlord’s daughter and girlfriend are upstairs right now very loudly making animal noises (I’ve heard cat, rooster, bear, and dog noises so far). You know, if Maria – his daughter – was like under the age of 10 it might be a kinda cute bonding thing (they don’t get along well), but she’s 20… So, there’s that.

Not sure if I want to know the context of the animal noises.

Anyway, to conclude my thoughts on the tea:

This is definitely delicious and I think a great introduction to Nina’s Paris. It makes me very excited to try the remaining Nina’s Paris samples that I have. However, peach is a flavour that I am often quite fickle about and typically do not prefer or crave so I don’t think I’d go out of my way to acquire any more because I just don’t think it’d be worth the effort. There are more attainable peach teas I can drink instead.

I wouldn’t turn down another cup, though ;)

Am I cranky tonight? Hmmmm I don’t think so… Am I being too fussy tonight? hmmmm trying not to be.

Sorry VariaTEA – I seem to be striking out tonight with your teas. I really appreciate your choices, and even misses are learning experiences, but it’s always more fun to write I LOVE IT tasting notes. I don’t love this.

This is the first Nina’s tea that I’ve tried, and while I can appreciate that this is a quality tea, it’s not to my taste. It’s not that I dislike citrus, it’s just really finicky for me. I often find it too acidic – flavors that are strong and “real” citrus, often cause me to feel like the acid is burning my tongue. If that makes any sense to anyone other than me. This is one of those. To be honest, I often prefer citrus when it’s more “candy”. This did get better as it cooled – so I put the last of the sample in some cold water and tossed it in the fridge. Will see how I do with it cold steeped….
ETA: I like this better cold steeped.