Pomme d'Amour

Today the weather is cloudy, rainy in Paris. Rain is the Automn’s side I don’t like. I was looking for some solace…

I found Pomme d’amour…Toffee apple in English ? The kind of sweet things we can buy in carnival. Let’s go for joy !
On the other hand, each time I see a Pomme d’amour…I think about Snow-White and the very red apple…as attractive as poisoned…

So verdict : Pomme d’amour is a joyful poison (addictive poison !)

To me this tea is closer to oven-baked caramelized apples than Toffee apples – it is really fruity and sweet but natural.

The dry leaf is amazing : very very dry and shinning.
Dammann is generous, a lot of petals and big pieces of apples are mixed with it. The smell is just fantastic.

The color of the infusion is really beautiful and the mix of the 2 black teas (Ceylan + china) is a perfect base to reveal all the flavours , so sweet but always natural.

I love it ! Sure it is a great antidote to the gloom of the Rain.

Steep Information:
Amount: 2 tsp
Water: 2 zarafina cups filtered
Tool: Zarafina black-loose-medium
Served: Hot

Tasting Notes:
Dry Leaf Smell: apple, spice, black tea, sweetness
Steeped Tea Smell: caramel, apple, spice, maybe cherry
Flavor: black tea
Body: Medium
Aftertaste: bitter
Liquor: translucent dark reddish-brown

I did something wrong, the tea smells fabulous, but is weak and a bit bitter. I think I need more leaf, and less time?

On the other hand both the tea and leaf smell so fabulous I am happy to just sit here and sniff….

Post-Steep Additives: none

Resteep: zarafina 1 c, same 2 tsp, black-loose-medium
stronger body, astringent, less bitter, black tea, hints of apple and spice

Next time 2 tsp / cup and some sugar

images: http://amazonv.blogspot.com/2010/04/dammann-freres-loose-leaf-black-tea.html

My sample sip down continues, and I am starting my day with this sample that came in a tea gift box from my daughter. (Superanna, for those who haven’t figured that out yet! grin )

Not many apple teas have made me roll around in ecstasy. Neither does this one. LOL! It isn’t bad, it is quite good. The base is smooth and warming, there is definitely more than just apple going on in it, and I can see this being incredibly comforting and soothing on a cold winter day. I don’t drink alcohol at all but I can really see this tea becoming awesome with the addition of something stout and dark, like maybe a splash of cognac? Brandy? I don’t know liquors though I have tasted some way way back, but I do think this would be an amazing tea to add some warming spirits to.

And I may be a hypocrite, because I said I wasn’t crazy about apple tea but I polished off a large cup of this in record time. Now I wish I had more.

Edit to add: second steep weaker but still really good. Also, gone.

This sounds so irresistible. French caramel apples in tea. I never had any caramel apple, ever, but that just made it much more appealing – it was the idea of it, caramel and apple, oh yay. It really was something I wanted to try, particularly since I have recently been impressed by the first Dammann tea I tried (Paul et Virginie, that was). So when Ysaurella so kindly shared this with me, yay, thank you so much again Ysaurella!

I could not resist trying this before getting really better from the cold I had, so my first teapot was not really a fair trial (a waste, but could not resist). And here goes my second attempt – I was distracted by something else and brew it just a smidgeon too long. No harm done, still extremely drinkable, just adding the data point that it´s probably much better with shorter steep times.

The dry leaf smells totally divine – not like apple nor caramel, but some indescritable blend, fruity and spicy and yes caramelley. The liquor smells and tastes differently. Like apples yes, and this tea left me quite baffled. I think part of the problem is that never having any caramel apple I did not know what to expect. For example, yesterday I tried another marvelous sample from Ysaurella, Rouge d´Automne which tastes wonderfully of marrons glacés – which taste very differently from any other dish of chestnuts! If I had never had had marrons glacés I think I would not have known what to make of that taste. And I get this feeling from Pomme D´Amour, like I can not recognize what it is about. It is very nice indeed, but a stranger somehow!

I didn’t select this tea specifically for today, as I chose it randomly from the teas that I have from Dammann Freres (thank you Doulton!), but it is perfect for today, as it is cloudy/overcast, and may actually rain! It’s definitely telling me that autumn is on its way. YAY! (For autumn IS my favorite season)

The flavor here is apple – much like baked apples. Sweet! Delicious. I like this tea very much. The black tea base is smooth and rich but not particularly brisk. A very relaxing black tea.

My second tasting from the nice samples provided by Ysaurella…
The weather is hot and sunny; the clouds and rain should only come later in the day. However I felt like having comfort food today to make up for my almost gone cold and for the absence of Hubby.
Pomme d’Amour smelled like the perfect antidote to any gloominess.
I was afraid to have left it steeping a bit too long, as I’m not sure I was not on the wrong side of 5 minutes, and that I had put too much of it, as it had really swelled inside my strainer. The little apple pieces in particular had especially filled out.
The color was a nice caramel honey; the smell very sweet and candy-like.
Then I sipped and was relieved not to find any hint of bitterness. My first surprise was that the caramel taste was lighter than I expected, but fortunately tasted like home-made caramel and not like the fake-caramel flavor which is often used in industrial foods and beverages, especially herbal-dust in bags heavily laden with artificial coloring and flavoring that is sold in most supermarkets.
The tea base seems really nice. Pomme d’Amour tea has the very natural taste of real fruit heavily dipped and cooked in sugar. This is undeniably a very high quality product.
I have to confess that I have only one bit of a toffee apple once in my life, many many years ago. My cousin who had shared a part of her delicacy with me was not very happy when I told her I did not like it very much, as it was too sweet and sugary; and that’s about the only recollection I have of it.
I am not the biggest fan of desserts, especially cakes, and am really quite picky about those; however a good Tarte Tatin is among my favorites. So I tried to find out what differences there were between Pomme d’Amour tea with what I love about apple cakes and Tarte Tatin. I came out with those findings:
- I usually like the apples to be a bit tangy, as the fruit tanginess complements the sugar-butter caramel better;
- I also much prefer when the cake is prepared with salted butter, especially crystal salt. To my opinion, the twist added by the salt make all the flavors stand out.
Of course, this tea did not promise to be “Tarte Tatin” flavored, but Pomme d’Amour and I believe the promise to be perfectly met.
If you have a very sweet-tooth, it should be a bullseye hit.
If you have more of a sweet and sour tooth, it might not be so convincing.

I’ll drink a second batch of this tea with great pleasure (and the first one did not linger long in my pot), however I know that I will not buy it, as I probably would not finish the batch, and that I have to be careful selecting candy-sweet flavored teas.

Freebie sachet from my order. Should’ve saved this for my upcoming road trip when I’m going to need bagged tea but the weather this week has had me in the mood for fall flavors.

The aroma is lovely – a mix of what seems like baked apples with dark caramel or maybe brittle? There’s also a maraschino cherry vibe but it underpins the rest of the aroma rather then standing alone.

Unfortunately, the aroma doesn’t translate too strongly to taste. The base black tea seems like a mix of Ceylon and maybe a Yunnan black. It has that trademark to me thick and glassy mouthfeel of many DF teas. The taste is clean, woody and mineral with tones of banana and yam. I enjoyed the second steep more than the first but I’m not sure why.

Too bad there’s such a discrepancy between nose and tongue. It did make me happy, however, and fit well the cooler weather we’ve been having. The fog blows in in the evening and blows out in the morning, leaving a mist in the air and some much needed moisture. Summer has barely started and I’m already longing for autumn.

I have been on the hunt for a delicious apple tea for a while now and I was excited to add this tea to my advent calendar order last month. It just sounded so delicious. And I’m glad I did because now I got it out of my system, but I’m a bit disappointed because this is not the end of my search for a delicious apple tea.

I think maybe my mistake is that this is a baked apple type of tea and I’m craving an apple pie, or even a fresh apple type of tea.

I get oven-baked apple and some caramel and vanilla, so it delivers on its promise. I’m the one who is fickle on this one and evidently changed my mind as to what I was hoping for: more apple. I do like it a lot more than the carcadet version though and it is a lovely tea.

So, to recap. I ordered 17 different Dammann Freres teas, and this is the last one. As of today I have tried them all. Some are absolutely delicious, others are just good. It seems to me that their teas that have several flavors are better than the ones that are just orange black, for example.

In the 10 days or so since I got the order I have picked this tea up and put it down maybe a dozen times. I just couldn’t bring myself to choose it over other things or get excited about it. Now I am wondering WHY?

This is. So. Good. I was brewing it on campus, and started to smell it and it was like a punch to the face. Yummy! Then I tasted it and I don’t know what I expected, maybe plain apple tea? But this tastes like a lightly spiced, buttery, caramel drizzled apple turnover straight out of the oven. So, so good. Definitely one of my favorites from the whole batch.

Was given this as an afterthought in a café in Lyon, where I’d purchase a set meal (the only thing available on a Saturday or Sunday) that included an additional pot of tea. I think because they were busy and I was the “demanding Amercian”, I was given this. It’s been a few days now (feels like a lifetime ago! it’s been four days) so I tried it.

Uh….

Well, it’s nice. Nice for someone else. (All I got was a faint apple thang, maybe something like a Shirley Temple. Is there grenadine in here?)