Héritage Gourmand - Cannelé

Thanks, Greenteafairy, for this tea!

As I drink this tea, I feel like my tongue is covered in vanilla cream! What the heck!? It almost feels numb and I can barely taste anything else. As I keep drinking it, it spreads and my whole mouth is coated by cream. It’s the oddest sensation coming from a liquid.

There is more going on once I actually get over the creamy sensation. The tea is darkly sweet, just barely roasty, and with a light floral note I can’t identify.

As I near the end of the cup, the creamy sensation deteriorates and gets slightly chalky or gritty- almost like my mouth is fighting the illusion of creaminess. This is when it becomes more like creme brulee.

This tea definitely took me on a sensation roller-coaster that was more texture than taste. Interesting tea! I’d have to try it again to see if I really like it or not.

I think this is still definitely my favorite from the Héritage Gourmand collection. I like that the flavor here is very mild. The texture is smooth and silky, and the toasted rice really makes it smell like an authentic baked good. I used to live right near St. Honoré in Portland (this was during a veganism hiatus) and my favorite things to get were the Cannelés.

I ended up with this tea because Macaron – also part of the Héritage Gourmand collection and an all-around excellent tea I was able to try thanks to Shelley_Lorraine – was sold out. I’d never heard of canelé before, but evidently it’s a custard-filled pastry with caramelized crust.

The tea base here is pleasant and smooth – maybe a Ceylon or similar? There’s a creamy quality to the tea, which is pleasant, and a slightly burnt one, which is less so. It gestures toward vanilla, I think, but never quite reaches it. This tea is okay, but only okay – it’s not something I’d buy again, and that goes doubly given how pricey MF is. I did get an awesome tin in the bargain, so there’s that.

Another hit from Mariage Freres!

I had this one on my mid-morning break. Pleasant flavor, not too strong, not bitter or astringent. I couldn’t taste individual flavors, but it smelled sort of buttery, creamy. Really nice!

This tea has been on my wishlist for ages and I finally got to try it today, thanks to beelicious. AMAZING! I’ve had a lot of delicious dessert teas that I thoroughly enjoyed, but this one takes things to a whole new level. I literally felt like I was drinking a melted eclair as I worked my way through this cup of deliciousness. Is so incredibly sweet and rich and creamy…and that’s without any sweetener! I need to order a great big tin of this, because I can tell right now that my sample isn’t going to last the week!

Yay, this is my first sample from greenteafairy! I have to say, I was so happy that she was willing to send me some of this, as this is the only Héritage Gourmand tea that I didn’t get from boychik. Also, the dessert that this tea is based on looks and sounds amazing… It’s basically a little cake-like thing baked in a tiny bundt-like mold, and it’s custardy on the inside while being dark and caramelized on the outside. And it’s flavored with rum and vanilla, yums! I think we all need to go to France, just to go on a pastry-eating binge. Anyway! The tea itself has these little white puffs in it, and I’m not sure whether they’re marshmallows or super-puffed rice. I also see something that looks like cacao shells, which confuses me since there’s no chocolate in this dessert. Smells sweet and yummy though!

As soon as the water hit the leaves, I was rewarded with an amazing creamy vanilla and caramel aroma. The scent of this tea reminds me of crème brûlée, sweet and custardy with creamy caramel notes. I added a little bit of raw sugar to my cup. Yum, I think this is the best caramel tea I’ve had so far. It’s not necessarily a super dark and rich caramel, more of a creamy caramel custard or sauce. Yum, vanilla caramel swirl!

Thanks goes out to Greenteafairy for a sample if this tea!

This tea is smooth and rich, yet has a light caramel flavor. I’m not tasting much of the tea base here, just the caramel. It reminds me a bit of MF’s Wedding Imperial which is impossibly difficult to brew a perfect cup of. This tea is much more forgiving in the brewing department and lacks the bitterness that Wedding Imperial is prone to. I like this tea, but probably not enough to buy a tin of it.

Thanks CharlotteZero for sending me samples of all your heritage gourmand teas! You are AWESOME!

I’ve been wanting to try these for a long time and was just going to take the plunge and order, but CharlotteZero was kind enough to send me samples so I didn’t have to order blindly.

To be honest, as much as I wanted them to live up to my expectations that I had going in, I was also kind of hoping they would be a complete disappointment, as six 100g tins of this tea would cost me $270 CAD. My expectations were so high that I was actually anticipating that I would be somewhat disappointed.

But, oh my god is this tea f’n delicious! I guess I’m jumping the gun a bit because I’ve only tried this one and Financier, but I would make an order just for this tea. I didn’t know what a Cannele was, but I looked it up and this tea tastes exactly how I imagined a Cannele would taste. You can taste the custardy inside of the pastry and the carmelized outside. This is heaven and the cup is gone. Hopefully this isn’t goodbye.

And that’s a sipdown. Thanks again, charlotte0!

I tried my last serving of this tea with half the amount of sugar I usually put in, as well as a bit of cream to thicken it up a bit. I still can’t say I was all that taken by it: I found the tea to still taste far too thin, and the flavouring was just rather lackluster for lack of a better term. I also occasionally get hints of something sort of metallic, and it seems to be more often in French teas than other types, and I’m not sure if it’s just me, but even if it is, I don’t really care what a tea tastes like in anyone else’s mouth anyway LOL. All’s well that ends well though, as I don’t know that i can afford to fall in love with these rather pricey teas.

You’re awesome for having shared this with me, charlotte0!