Nina's Paris

Let’s try this again. My computer is having a little temper-tantrum and shutting off on me again. Oh well.

I was expecting a plain green tea with this one, but when I poured my water over it I thought I smelled mint. I was correct and my first sips were mint. It was a plain mint. Nothing really stood out about it. It had a nice toothpaste clean mouth feel after it. But I wasn’t really tasting the green tea.

It cooled down a little bit and the green tea finally stood up. You can still taste the mint, but it isn’t as strong as it was at the beginning of the cup. It is slightly astringent. When it cools more you can really feel it at the back of your throat.

I’m not sure I like it as much as I did when I first took a sip. The green tea is a little rough for me this time and the mint is having a strange aftertaste in the back of my throat. It is nice and light and delicate. I think I would drink this with smaller cups though instead of in the big mugs of tea I normally have.

So, I don’t think I would go out and buy it for myself, but it is nice to drink. I like their Japon tea better.

Edit: So people are classifying this as a Moroccan mint type of tea? That’s interesting because I keep thinking of how nice it would be to mix this with my gunpowder green to see how it would turn out. That’s funny!

My stomach just feels upset this morning for some reason. I’m not sure why, so I thought some tea might help. I dumped the rest of the leaves that I had in my press to steep with the older leaves from last night and it tasted lots better. Yummy. I’m sad to see it go, but that means that I’ll just have to get more when I am able to.

I must be on a green tea kick today. I love how this one smells. It reminds me of a marshmallow. I used less leaf on this one today and if I re-steep it tonight then I’ll toss the rest of the leaf I have in with it. I have to remember that I tend to like a little more leaf and a little less time.

I might have to put this one on my teas I need to get list for later. I do really like it. Nice and toasty and green.

Not only have I had tea, I’m actually having a second steep of a tea as well! I brewed the water slightly hotter this time and boy oh boy is this second cup tasty!

I’m getting warm roasted marshmallow with a nice blend of green tea and black tea flavor. Then on the aftertaste I get melted marshmallow like I had just eaten a real golden fire-toasted one. It isn’t as sweet as the first cup was, but it is more delicious.

I have a feeling that if I had a tin of this then it would make a fantastic sweet iced tea. Sadly, I only have enough for one more big mug of this and I think I might save it and have it for another day.

I’m really tired of my body trying to get me sick. I was scheduled off today, but my doctor is making me stay home the rest of the work week because they think I might have something going on with my appendix. I hope not. I am feeling better today, but we will know more tomorrow.

So I am finally getting back into tea (even though I am having quite a steamy love affair with coffee) and I decided to break out this one. The caramel notes and the vanilla are morphing into marshmallow. I’m not sure if I got this hot enough because that is all I am tasting. I’m not really tasting any of the green tea, but I am getting a roasty feeling from the rice.

Either way it is tasty. The fiancee approves too.

Sample package: 2” x 2” clear plastic zip-lock, measured 1.75 tsp.
Label: “GRAND AMOUR “ (No ingredients listed. No brewing instructions.)

Per http://www.ninasparis.com/en/pro_tea0.html:
“Le gourmand GRAND AMOUR
Raspberry, red currant, vanilla, caramel
True love between raspberry and red currant: an irresistibly fruity attraction. Love at first sight, guaranteed!”

Thanks to Laurent at Nina’s Paris Tea Store USA
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ninas-Paris-Tea-Store-USA/569332199761362
for the recommended brewing instructions: 1 rounded tsp. / 205*F / 6oz / 2.5 min and for confirming that each sample pack is a two-cup sample.

Technique:
12-oz water with total dissolved solids (TDS) of 19 ppm – verified with HM Digital DM-1: http://www.tdsmeter.com/products/dm1.html
Heated to 212*F and allowed to cool to 205*F – verified with DAVIDsTEA digital thermometer
Steeped the entire tea sample in a single container for 2.5 minutes, and then poured two six ounce servings.

This tea has a potent raspberry fragrance.

2.5-min Infusion: The aroma followed the strong raspberry fragrance. The flavor was a blend of raspberry, fruit (red currant), black tea, vanilla, and caramel, with the raspberry as the strongest of the five. This flavored tea was not at all bitter or astringent and had a clean finish. However, the black tea base was light- to medium-bodied. (This may be due to the sub-optimal sample size.)

Impression: A smooth, light- to medium-bodied fruity desert tea.

Suggestions: Nina’s Paris should consider assuring that there are at least two rounded teaspoon in each sample pack. “Love at first sight, guaranteed!” might be more likely if each sample contained enough tea for two cups. It’s false economy to not provide sufficient tea for a good first impression.

Thanks to Nina’s Paris for providing this free sample.

Glad I remembered to copy text before trying to post :)

I have found all the Nina’s teas I’ve tried to be subtle cups. They don’t shout flavor. They quietly reveal themselves, if you are willing to take the time with the cup. This one is no different. It starts lightly of orange that is followed and supported by peach. The soft flavors are natural. The cup seems a bit creamy to me. As it cools the strawberry reveals itself. Later the cherry can be detected but I find it the lightest of the flavors. The base is smooth with no astringency. If you like big and bold – forget it. If you like a quiet relaxing cup, you might like this one.

Sipdown
Thanks to Laurent for this sample.
A very apple & rose tasting cup, highly fragrant. It’s not bad, but definitely too perfumed for me.

Thanks to Laurent for this sample!
The dry smell is VERY apple, but also smells of a very ripe & fragrant pear, & rose.
The flavoring is very realistic, & amazingly so. Some apples, like red delicious, tend to have a bitter peel, & this flavor seems to have been captured in this tea, which is not very appealing to me.
Otherwise the apple & rose flavors are nicely balanced & it is a pleasure to drink.

Last night was writers’ group night at my house, which means I make lots of tea! This was the first tea served. I made it in my large Teavana tetsubin with the warmer.

Before serving the tea, I told a few people the story of Nina’s, how they began and how they made perfume for Marie-Antoinette, how the tea we would be drinking was flavored with apples from the King’s kitchen garden at the palace of Versailles.

One of our members does not care for green apple flavor, but the rest were effusive in their praise of this tea. A couple of members had come in late and did not know what we drinking, so I know they were not affected by the romantic tale of Nina’s Tea, yet they actually interrupted the group to say, “I don’t know what this is, but it is GOOD!”

I have had this tea since March but it warrants another tasting note. I want to show what a chameleon it can be!

Many weeks ago I served this at tea time. I made it the way I usually make flavored black tea – boiling water and steep for four minutes. My guest wasn’t crazy about it, but she drank it and said it was okay. I was surprised – this is Nina’s signature blend.

So today I made it the same way I did for my friend with allergies, cutting the steep to three minutes. My guest sipped it and didn’t recognize it as the tea we had before. That one minute changes this to a rose tea with a hint of apple, instead of a green apple flavored black with a hint of rose. She really liked it this way.

My best friend came over to have tea with me today. I wanted her to try this one because she likes green apple flavors and this one was strongly apple flavored to me. The rose was a more subtle aspect.

We served it with toast because I read something last night that I wanted to try. I saw someone recommend mixing unrefined coconut oil with honey as a toast spread, and a number of people commented that this was their favorite spread for toast. We decided to try it today since tea and toast are so very tea time! I have to say, it was delicious, tasted like cinnamon toast, and would probably also be good with a bit of cinnamon added!

When I opened the tea tin, my friend thought it smelled like strong perfume and she is very sensitive to that sort of thing. I decided to still make it, but cut the steep time to three minutes, and the most amazing thing happened. The green apple tea with a hint of rose became rose tea with a hint of green apple! And it is a lightly peppery rose flavor. I do not know if the steep time is what changed the taste so greatly, or if it was the food pairing that did it, but I do know this was my favorite way so far to steep it! My friend enjoyed it and said she would like to drink it again when she comes over.

GMathis, JacquelineM, and K S, keep an eye on your mailbox because I mailed your samples of this tea today!

I had a big surprise with this tea today! It is insufferably hot and muggy here, although honestly it is not as bad as some summers have been…so far. I really don’t want to stop drinking my hot tea, but I really need something cold.

I decided to experiment and see if this one would cold steep very well. I didn’t think it would, because I reasoned to myself that the flavoring probably wouldn’t translate well. For that reason, I took the last of the 175F water from the green tea I had just made (it had cooled a bit) and poured that over the leaves first to “wake” them. There was very little of it and it just covered the leaves in the pitcher plus a little extra. I filled the pitcher the rest of the way with cold water and put it in the fridge. I waited about five hours to try it.

Before drinking, I added a bit of simple syrup because I do like a little sweetener in my iced teas, though I take none in my hot teas. And I have to say, this tastes just like it did hot! The apple flavor is every bit as strong. If you love green apples, you should give this a try! I do not get a ton of rose from this, mostly green apple, but others have said they get a lot of the floral taste. Maybe I need to focus my palate a bit more!

I have had this for about three weeks, but I waited to review because I thought I had done something wrong. (Hang in there, I didn’t do anything wrong but there was a very fixable problem – solution is thanks to Rashad.)

The first two times I tried it, it was anything but delicate. It wrestled my tongue into a headlock and tried to cut it with a shiv. It was some very aggressive tea. But it wasn’t the base, it was the flavoring. I had loved, I say LOVED, every other Nina’s Tea I had tried. Other people loved it. Rashad loved it. What was wrong with me? I served it to a guest, and they said, “Meh.”

Then Frank’s teas started getting some off comments and he said maybe people could try airing it for a bit.

Rashad’s tin of Marie-Antoinette arrived and it was “anything but delicate”, while his sample had been quite good. He decided to air the tin, and when I saw his note I decided to try it, too.

All the difference in the world! That is what it made, indeed. Now this is a sour apple tea that is lightly rose scented. The rose appears in the scent and in the aftertaste but is light, not heavy and perfumey. The tea base can now be tasted, and I really wasn’t getting the base before.

Nice tea save! Thank you, Rashad!

Sample package: 2” x 2” clear plastic zip-lock – 2 level tsp
Label: “JE T’AIME” (No ingredients listed. No brewing instructions.)

Per http://www.ninasparis.com/en/pro_tea0.html:
“Le celèbre thé JE T’AIME
Vanilla, caramel
A voluptuous tea with the sweet taste of vanilla and all the tenderness of caramel. A blend that will envelop you in gentleness and warmth.”

Thanks to Laurent at Nina’s Paris Tea Store USA
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ninas-Paris-Tea-Store-USA/569332199761362
for the recommended brewing instructions: 1 rounded tsp / 195*F / 6oz / 2.5 min.

Technique:
Water with total dissolved solids (TDS) of 23 ppm
Heated to 212*F and allowed to cool to 195*F – verified with DAVIDsTEA digital thermometer
Steeped the entire tea sample in 12-oz for 2.5 minutes, then poured two six ounce servings.

This tea has a potent caramel vanilla fragrance.

2.5-min Infusion: The aroma followed the caramel vanilla fragrance. Similarly, the flavor followed both the fragrance & the aroma. The caramel vanilla flavor was so dominate that I cannot easily comment on the character of the base tea other than to say that it was not at all bitter or astringent and had a clean finish. Perhaps a longer infusion time may have allowed the base tea to more fully develop. Since the tea was very sweet, I wasn’t inclined to steep it longer.

Impression: A smooth, very sweet desert tea.

Suggestions: Perhaps Nina’s Paris might consider recommending a longer infusion time or a little less flavoring to allow more of the merits of the tea to shine through.

Thanks to Nina’s Paris for providing this free sample.

I am really surprised at myself. I have avoided genmaicha thinking I would not like it very much. I had Chocolate Delight by the Teaguys, and it has toasted rice in it I am fairly sure, but there are so many other ingredients in that blend that I wasn’t sure what made it tasty! Then I tried a bagged genmaicha and must have made it badly because it was TERRIBLE! But I think I just didn’t know how to handle it.

This one is easy, forgiving, and really tasty. My tea party guest did a double take today, almost setting her cup down after her first sip but taking it right back under her nose to sniff. “This is good!”

Indeed it is, and I recognize some of the flavor from Chocolate Delight, so I must have tasted the toasted rice after all. The caramel lends a really smooth, warm taste. The base comes off more as black tea than green to me.

This is one of my favorites from my birthday box! Thank you, SuperAnna for the tea, and Laurent for choosing!

I had tea with some little girls who drink copious amounts of it, laden with milk and sugar. I wanted to stretch my fruity flavored blends supply since they are joining me a lot now, so I tried resteeping this to see if it keeps its pizzazz. It really does have excellent flavor.

Tea is funny! I had this yesterday and thought it was mainly peach. I had it today and got apricot first, peach second, and apple almost not at all. LOL! Anyway, it was excellent!

The tea base is very light and the flavors taste very natural without that irritating alcohol up your nose fumes that some flavored teas give. I think it is a nice level of flavoring, not overbearing.
This is a delicate and foofy tea for tea party time! Very enjoyable.

I used water just barely at the boil and gave it a three minute steep. Nice color to the liquor makes me think this was a sufficient steep time.

It was hard to wait for it to cool to drinking temperature, but worth it. I took one of the little dried fruit pieces and it was so sweet and nice. The peach flavor in this is very good. I have one or two peach teas that I drink but I always have the feeling that I am getting some kind of burning fumes up my nose from the artificial “high note” that must be a byproduct of the flavoring. This tea does not have that to me. The fruit flavors are light, sweet, and natural tasting. The peach does not “turn” my tongue and make me pucker, and I am pretty sensitive to peach flavors. Done right, I like them. Done wrong, like in peach yogurt from the grocery, they gag me.

I thought at first that peach was the dominant flavor, and I will have to say it is the dominant aroma for me, but as it cools and as I sip, I do find the apple coming out and I think it keeps the peach from misbehaving. Apricot is dicey for me to recognize, since I have eaten very little apricot, and the taste is much like peach to me, only mellowed and warmer.

This was a nice choice for this dreary grey day while spring is being held out of my grasp!

Backlog #2: This was one of the samples I got from Nina’s Paris and I was hesitant to try it after I looked it up because I am not the biggest fan of cherry. But I wanted to try it before I had it with my fiance.

My first mistake was smelling the dry tea. It smells like Robitussin cough syrup. That made me a little nervous. But once you brew it, the tea smells utterly fantastic! I would love to bottle the scent and smell it when I’m having a bad day because it smells like a mix between freshly baked cherry pie and a Yankee cherry candle. (both scents that I love so your mileage my vary)

Once brewed I tried it plain and it tasted like cherry, but it wasn’t a bad cherry. Little tart for my liking so I added some sugar, just one teaspoon of sugar so I didn’t have some tea with the sugar. It was nice and pleasant. The cherry flavor was balanced and not too overly cherry. I was actually liking it pretty well.

And then I started to read a book with my second cup and I let the tea cool down. Boom! Insta-cherry. Very strong and the sour cherry popped out. Once it cooled it was just way, way too much cherry for me.

So, if you like cherry then you will love this tea. I’m not the biggest fan because I’m not the biggest fan of cherry. Which is sad because I think this would be an excellent iced tea.

This does make me interested to explore their other rooibos blends because it was very balanced and it didn’t taste woody. Plus they have the zodiac so I can see if I like what they have for Scorpio.

This is a sample sent to me from Laurent @ Nina’s. Thank you!
I have to admit, after I gave Laurent my address, I think I was suppose to look at the catalog & pick out some teas for him to send. I got sidetracked & never got around to it. So I got random samples.

So…Cancer is not my sign. I’m an Aquarius. Also, I don’t usually like rooibos much, & in fact, for some reason the look of it kind of freaks me out. It just doesn’t look real, LOL. So, even though the rooibos in this blend looks creepy to me, it is the best looking rooibos I’ve seen, in that it’s not as chopped up as usual, & none of it managed to get through the filter & into my throat, so that’s a plus. I’m guessing that this is a higher grade rooibos than I usually end up with.
I decided to sample this because I’m trying not to stay up til 2am for once, so I’m avoiding caffeine for the evening in an effort to wind down. Initially, the rooibos taste was fairly strong, but then the pineapple flavor really stepped forward. The coconut was there too. I’ve still been working on restringing that harp (only 2 octaves to go), so my tea had a chance to cool a bit, & the flavors really blended together beautifully. It was quite good!

Sample package: 2” x 2” clear plastic zip-lock – 2 level tsp
Label: “Earl Grey.” (No ingredients listed. No brewing instructions.)

Per http://www.ninasparis.com/en/pro_tea0.html:
“Le Royal EARL GREY
Bergamot from Sicily
The smoothness of Keemun together with the freshness of bergamot. An ancient recipe that was handed down by a high dignitary of China to Earl Charles Grey. A classic that definitely shouldn’t be missed.”

Thanks to Laurent at Nina’s Paris Tea Store USA
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ninas-Paris-Tea-Store-USA/569332199761362
for the recommended brewing instructions:
1 rounded tsp / 195*F / 6oz / 2.5 min.

Technique:
6-oz water with total dissolved solids (TDS) of 22 ppm
Heated to 212*F and allowed to cool to 195*F – verified with DAVIDsTEA digital thermometer
1 rounded teaspoon
Stepped for 2.5 mins.

Introduction: Most EG teas come from Shi Lanka formerly known as Ceylon. Having a Keemun base (a favorite tea of mine), was a significant reason for wanting to sample this tea. Our current EG has a Ceylon base and I can’t get past the astringency. Other primary reason: My wife loves EG.
This tea has a lemony Earl Grey fragrance that’s slightly stronger than the Keemun base.

Amber hue

2.5-min Infusion: My wife noted an initial peppery/thyme-like aroma. I noted that the aroma of the tea was stronger than the light oil of bergamot lemon sent. Some Keemun teas have a smokey aroma. Perhaps this characteristic was competing with the lemon aroma?

Similarly, the taste followed the aroma. The Keemun stands out above the light oil of bergamot lemon flavor. This Earl Grey was very smooth, not at all bitter or astringent with a clean finish.

Impression: A very smooth muted Earl Grey tea.

Suggestions: Perhaps Nina’s Paris might consider adding more of the wonderful Sicilian Bergomot to this very smooth Keemun. Another possibility might be to select a less aromatic Keemun or a Yunnan Dian Hong style black tea instead.

Thanks to Nina’s Paris for providing this free sample.

The keemun base is smooth, but that is all I’m tasting sadly. No peach, melon or papaya. There’s a light fruit scent, but I’m not finding that it comes through in taste.

My thanks to Laurent from Nina’s Teas for the sample.