lizwykys Send Message

Well, here we go again. Another DF tea I need to keep keeping. I’m sensing a pattern. Okay, actually the fact is, that I’ve now had several Dammann Frères that I’m not fond of, but when they do hit, they really hit for me. And the formula for those is this: I yearn for a particular fruit flavor, but I also worry, because I don’t want BRAAAAQ [INSERT FRUIT HERE] AOOGA AOOGA flavor. I don’t want a tea that tastes like a tisane, and I don’t want to be flooded with sensory aspects of the flavor … like, oh, this is definitely strawberry because it’s SO SWEET AND SO TART, and this lemon because it’s ZOMG ZOW SOUR AND ZINGY, etc. I also don’t want candy versions of the flavor. I don’t even want them to be “true to life” versions, necessarily. If I want to eat figs or apricots, I can eat figs or apricots. But if I want to cook something with figs or apricots, I will be thinking of carefully layering flavors that go with that taste to create something more symphonic, and that’s what DF does so well.

With Paul & Virginie, I was hoping for a blend where the cherry stood out (for my palate, anyway), but wasn’t cherry cough syrup flavor, or cherry LifeSavers flavor, or cherry juice, or cherry liqueur or chocolate cherry. Cherry is a very easy flavor to over-cherry! (okay, I have to stop, the very word “cherry” is beginning to look crazy to me, like that can’t be right? Is cherry even spelled that way? I’ve overcherried my brain. See how fast that was?)

Anyway, long story not quite short, I love the blend here: cherry, raspberry, red currant, strawberry, vanilla and toffee. I love that it doesn’t have chocolate. I love that there’s a little bit of juicy tartness, but it’s not pucker face fruity, and it’s still tea, not at all fruit drink, and how the vanilla and toffee (I think it’s caramel, actually) smooth it out and marry it all together without steering it into a caramel tea.

I think some others have said that the strawberry stands out to them, but not for so much for me, which is a good thing. It’s not that I don’t like strawberry (am I a monster?), it’s just that it’s not my fave, and not what I was hoping for here.

Finally, I’ll just note that, as with some other DF teas, I cannot really parse the logic of the name. “Paul et Virginie” is the name of an 18th century novel set in Mauritius — an island known for very many lovely tropical fruits, but none of the more northerly suited ones featured in this tea. C’est un mystère.