Steepster Freeze 2021 #4: 03/05/21
Happy National Day of Unplugging! Today is the Sipdown Challenge day to drink a favorite tea for relaxing; for me, those mostly fall in the tisane category, which I drink after work. During the work day, I drink caffeinated tea. So, I won’t be posting my tea choice until this evening (and once again Steepster is broken on a prompt day… I swear it is a planned effort at this point…).
So now onto… French Friday! This was the tea I randomly grabbed from the sampler bag from Dustin today. Thanks Dustin! The dry leaf has a very alluring smell of juicy pear, stonefruit (I’m getting a bit of the Mirabelle plum aroma that is present in Lupicia’s “Kotobuki”), and a florality that I can’t distinctly pinpoint. I brewed the full 6.4g to 500ml in 205F water for 3.5 minutes.
Brewed tea is a pretty burnt sienna orange. The aroma smells pretty much spot-on for the dry leaf — a floral/perfumy mix of pear and stonefruit. The mouthfeel is giving me a bit of a strong syrupy/coating feeling, which I remember I had from Marco Polo as well; I’m suspecting I may have either used a bit too much leaf for the amount of water or steeped a little longer than necessary, producing a quite strong cup. My personal preferences on this sort of “perfumy/fragrant” French teas seem to be a softer/more gentle brewing than a heavy-handed cup. It’s also just a tad astringent/drying toward the end of the sip, backing up that theory. Ah well, sometimes you just have a bad-steep day…
That aside, the flavor itself it mostly a sweet, succelent pear note. I’m still tasting a bit of the stonefruit, not as strongly as the pear, though; on the tongue it is reading more as apricot or peach than Mirabelle plum, though. The floral note is really strong, but I don’t know how to describe it… my botanical knowledge is not great. It reminds me of jasmine because it is thick, coating, and strong on the nose, but it doesn’t taste like jasmine. Cheating and looking at the flavor notes from the manufacturer, it appears the floral is lotus… which I really have no experience with, so I’m not surprised I couldn’t peg it (I’ve only had one lotus tea before, and it was so old the scenting wasn’t that potent). It’s a very pretty aroma, even if I can’t describe it. I just don’t like the coating/drying feeling that sticky florality is leaving on my tongue.
I think, if I could brew this again using slightly altered parameters, I’d find a cup in my “perfect” zone and be really into this flavor combination.
Flavors: Astringent, Drying, Floral, Peach, Pear, Perfume, Plum, Stonefruit
