Fruits d'Alsace

Unfortunately, this is a total miss for me. I’m not picking up any notes besides a very medicinal cherry. No stone fruit/plum. Nothing very complex.

I love how this tea smells. Adore it. So much so that I’ll occasionally open up my tea cabinet just to pop the lid and take a sniff.

After a slightly-longer-than-desired steep (pets are distracting little buggers) I was rewarded with a mid-amber brew that smells just like the leaf – fruity, sweet and gently tasty. Now that I’ve stopped sugaring my teas, however, I’m having just a bit of trouble finding those notes in the taste portion of my drink.

Adding a tablespoon of whole milk helps to temper down the intensity of the black tea and bring some of those fruity notes to the forefront, but overall I think this may be a tea which just requires some sweetener to truly shine.

This one is from Ost. Lately, I haven’t been loving fruity blacks, but this one is pretty good. The black tea is all right, and the fruity flavor is pretty strong and nice. Hard to say what fruit it’s meant to be. Maybe apricot? I have enough for another cup or two, which I’ll enjoy, but I won’t order more.

Sipdown no. 1 of 2021! (no. 621 total).

Happy New Year, and may it be a lot better than 2020!

Still continuing with the house project. Going room by room. The easiest rooms first. I feel a lot better without all the clutter around. I don’t have high hopes that it will stay that way, though.

Anyway, I thought this tea would be right up my alley. I love fruity teas, and particularly French fruity teas. And yet, as I said in my original note, this one doesn’t have that mysterious French thing going other than in the name.

It’s an ok fruity tea, but I prefer the ones from Kusmi, Mariage Freres, etc. Those have more depth — this one has a sort of painted on quality to the fruit flavor.

Holy stone fruits, Batman.

When I was selecting samples, I nearly overlooked this one. When I read Fruits d’Alsace I automatically thought of cherries, so I figured this would be a bit like a Black Forest gateau minus the chocolate. As such, I nearly didn’t add it to my cart.

The apricot and plum sold me. I love stone fruits. When I was little, we had a plum tree right outside the back door. It was, to put it plainly, heaven. This is one of the few times I’ve seen plum in a tea. It’s often paired with ginger, and I don’t mind that. Many of those blends are nice (enough). I digress.

I tried this hot and straight, and, to be fair, I didn’t love it. I could taste all the fruits featured in the blend. The cherry flavor really lingers, and I’m not the biggest fan of cherries. Thankfully, it’s not that artificial cherry flavor that gives you cough syrup vibes. Cringe.

I enjoyed my cuppa, but this tea is begging to be iced or cold-steeped. I’ll see how I get on with that another day.

This one has a nice balance of strong tea flavor with the fruitiness, neither one overpowering the other. It is kind of generically fruity as opposed to a particular flavor, but that doesn’t bother me for some reason. I think this is one that would have broad general appeal to a fair number of people.

If you like cherry this one is a great tea to try. Cherry …maybe a black cherry …is the dominate note in this blend. As it cools there seems to be a slight after taste of alcohol…subtle…maybe like some sort of fruit liquor.
Cream gives it smoother, less fruity, flavor. A nice after dinner tea.

This is one of those cases where I suspect the tea is just fine, but not really my thing.
The fruit aroma is very strong and the fruit flavor appears to dominate the tea. It possibly doesn’t help that I am not a huge fan of stone fruits to begin with.

Also, for some very weird reason, the aroma of the tea as I go to take a sip makes me think its going to taste soapy. I have no idea as to why. It doesn’t taste soapy. Maybe I am associating it with one of those scented shower gels or something similar.

This may be an excellent tea for others, but its just not my thing.

another sample from lost provenance (Ysaurella? sorry unknown donor), and a nice tea. A fruity black tea. It reminded me of Dammann teas weirdly, the base. Can´t say much about it, but it was nice.

One of my weekend guests so generously shared her nasty cold with me, so I’m binge drinking the teas in my house in an attempt to feel better. In all fairness, I’ve had this tea before but just never managed to write a review. Now that I’m laid up with this horrible illness, I’ve got plenty of time! First time I had this tea was at the H&S tea room in Soho, and I ordered a pot of it on a whim. Such delicious fruitiness! I was happily surprised. I’m not really getting any apricot – just plums and cherries, but that’s just fine – it’s delightful. Kind of my idea of a perfect fruity black – almost sweet with lots of beautiful aroma. No need for sweetener nor milk, it’s just perfect on it’s own. And not at all medicinal, which is amazing considering how often flavors like this end up. Would I try this iced? Maybe, but it’s so good hot that I don’t feel compelled to change a thing. Maybe when the weather gets really warm. For now, it’s doing me a lot of good just as it is!