Palais des Thés

So I now have my new variable temperature kettle from Bosch to play with. (I finally found the one I wanted through an Italian vendor, so I didn’t have to produce any sort of documents at all to resolve the hostage situation that generally ensues when I receive a suspicious package from a foreign country.) …

I still stand by everything I wrote in my last tasting note for this tea, but as I have had so many quite exceptional greens lately, I feel inclined to drop my rating by five points (Quelle insolence!). I want to cold brew something today, though – if it’s this one I drop into the …

Thé du Hammam, we meet again – I reviewed the rooibos a couple of months back: http://gluttonette.com/?p=258. I am unsure whether or not that’s too high a grade in light of my recent love affair with Mariage Frères and their Rouge Provence, but we’ll see. The green version smells beautiful; sweet, floral and fruity. In the …

Lupicia’s fruity teas tend to be the standard by which I measure all others – I love their strong scents and sweet, juicy flavours – and most of all the fact that said scents and flavours hardly ever hit artificial notes. They’re such happy, friendly teas. Sometimes, however, I want a tea that is somewhat …

Unsurprisingly, this reminds me of another ginger-lemon green tea – the one by Kusmi. Maybe I’m just more used to that one, but this packs less punch and seems flatter and less complex in terms of taste. The dry tea is beautiful to look at, though, and smells very good – two areas in which …

This tea smells absolutely gorgeous dry, but this doesn’t really translate to the cup. However, I do prefer the very natural, albeit subtle, vanilla flavour to something artificial that’s more present. For me, this can be summed up as a very basic and plain green tea with hints of vanilla that almost completely disappear after …