Wedding Impérial

Received a sample of this in a swap with QueenOfTarts. Thanks a ton!

Parameters:
Pre-boil water
1.5tsp / 10oz
2 min

This is really nice. I was worried that it wouldn’t taste as good as it smelled. The wet and dry leaf has an aroma of vanilla, caramel, and lightly buttered popcorn. (I’ve come to realize that I love buttery popcorn-like tea, whether it’s the result of additives or a straight tea!) Many people have said that this tea is bold but I don’t think it’s a punchy Assam base at all. It’s a little fruity, silky and smooth. The fruit flavor is unidentifiable to me. Whatever it is, it’s bright and almost citrusy. It’s way smoother than I would have expected. There is a touch of malt at the end of each sip, but nothing that makes me think “chocolate”. It’s more of a nutty, caramel popcorn tea to me. The tea base and flavoring are in equal balance. Neither overpowers the other. I brewed a second cup for 3 minutes.; it mellowed out without any significant loss of flavor.

I broke out some Biscoff cookies to eat with this tea and it was OMG delicious!

I had my last cup of this tea and decided to add milk to see how it would taste. I don’t pick up on the caramel or chocolate flavors, but am tasting a weird coconut flavor instead. It’s not gross, but is just rather surprising. This coconut flavor isn’t super strong or sour, so it’s good for me as I’m not crazy about strong coconut. I wish that more of the caramel and chocolate came out with milk, but this tea is lovely either way. I’ll have to buy more of this in the future!

One of the first teas my wife and I shared on our first date.

So I had a total moment in the kitchen at work this morning. I was trying to add milk to my cup of this, and being a bit cautious because it’s a fairly full bottle and I didn’t want to overdo it. So I’m tipping it just a bit, as you do, and nothing’s coming out. I’m usually half asleep until about 11, so I checked I’d taken the lid off (and I had, so points for me), and tipped it a bit further. Still nothing. It was frozen, guys. Like, solid. So then I had to check that I’d put it in the fridge and not the freezer, and I had, so at least it’s not my own sleepiness that robbed me of milk this morning. It’s defrosting slowly, although I’m not madly keen on the thought of adding frozen chunks of milk to my next cup. I might just give it a miss until tomorrow, and see what it’s like then.

On a positive note, my cupboard is now really near 200 (and will hopefully be under 200 again before I go on holiday on the 24th.) Keeping it that way might be a problem, though. It’s around this point that I usually get a hankering to order all the tea, and true to form I’m currently trying to convince myself that I don’t need to place 4 orders and push it right back up to about 250 again. But I want to. In my head, I know I should hold off ordering until I’ve got a much more manageable cupboard, which for me means around 50-75. But think of the tea I’ll be missing in the meantime. It doesn’t help that a Whittard just opened again in Norwich, and they have some new blends that are really calling to me – Cucumber Mint and Petit Macaron in the cutest pastel caddies…

Ahh…

This note wasn’t really about Wedding Imperial, in the end. I feel like I’ve said all that I have to say about it for the moment, and all I can really add at this point is that I definitely prefer it with milk. If I’d known I’d be drinking it black, I probably would have underleafed and reduced the brew time, because it’s quite potent. Rich chocolate and caramel, with nothing to temper it, before 10 in the morning? Hardly the best idea. But you can’t tip MF down the sink, so I went with what I had. We’ll reunite once my milk defrosts.

My dad picked up an ounce of this at an unidentified specialty food store, and I’m just going to have to make him identify it, because wow. This is some luxurious tea.

The dry leaves smell really sweet, sort of like vanilla caramel. I saw that people were having issues with bitterness, so I kept my steep time at 3 minutes (per usual) and used a bare teaspoon of leaf and never had a problem at all. In fact, this is the creamiest tea I’ve had to date. It feels amazing in my mouth and really does taste like milk chocolate caramel. I think the assam is present enough to keep it from being too sweet, but I can see this being classified as a decadent dessert tea. (My dad says it had better be fantastic at the price he paid, so I am definitely not going to ask him, haha.)

Truly sad to see the bottom of the bag on this one.

Smooth and delicious.

First found this tea when visiting my sister in CA. It is amazing. Very smooth taste and smells wonderful. My goofy brother-in-law took the sachet and used it as a airfreshener in his truck.