Jardin à la Française (French Garden)

Palais des Thés Advent Calendar – Day 23 (from November backlog)

Hmm, I have mixed feelings about trying this. I love pear, but blackberry leaf is another story… It can be so cloying.

So this mostly tastes like apple to me. Maybe with a little bit of pear mixed in there? But it’s definitely cooked pear. I don’t really taste the blackberry leaf much, which is a good thing. Maybe a hint of earthy herbal flavor at the end of the sip?

I find this to be a very boring and somewhat bland tisane. The only real flavor here is apple, and even that isn’t very prominent or dimensional. It’s a bit like what I would expect to get if I just steeped a bunch of dried apple chunks in water. Meh!

Last week I was in my home country (Belgium), and I travelled around quite a bit. It´s amazing how often a tea shop now makes part of those nice little shops one can find in a city´s centre, and Louvain-la-Neuve is not an exception. Near the Grand Place is a wonderful tea shop from the French Palais des Thés chain. As soon as I stepped in, I was offered a taster (I could choose between a black tea and a herbal tea, I opted for the first) and I got an explanation about the way they present the teas here (you can experience the fragrances of the tea by picking up a bell glass), before I started my discovery tour of the shop and the teas they offered. The packaging is really well taken care of, also the design I think is really nice, and the choice offered of tea is alright (not too many “off the beaten track” teas though). As I find it particularly difficult to find a nice fruit based tea (on the real stuff, not on aroma´s!) I can easily cold brew, I finally bought this Jardin à la française tea, which is a herbal tea dominated by a very natural pear fragrance. Back at home, I tried the tea today…preparing it the “normal” way, i.e. hot : the very elegant pear fragrance is present in the loose tea, in the steeping tea, in the final brew, until the last sip, which is definitely a big plus! After 4-5 minutes of steeping, the colour is still very light, but the taste is well developed (and the pear taste always comes over naturally), so I can only imagine this giving a wonderful result cold as well. I only hope I´ll still be having tea when the hot days arrive and I really need a cold brew ;-)