My first “gourmet” flavored tea was by Dammann Freres, and it felt like a whole new wonderful world had been opened up to me. It astonished me that they could put so many flavors into a single tea without them competing and turning it into a pure mush in which one flavor could not be distinguished from another. I remember seeing “biscuit” flavor listed and thinking, “Hah! How can you make tea really taste like biscuit? It probably just tastes like vanilla!” And then I sipped and my eyes widened and I said, “OOOOOOOOH! It tastes like biscuit!”
Not flour-y buttered biscuits from the good old Southern USA, but a lightly sweet European biscuit. They NAILED it. Oh, delightful pastry, how I love thee!
That first tea had lots of different flavors, but this one boasts of just biscuit and four red fruits. They have achieved marvelous balance with this tea, as the sweetish biscuit flavor rises hand in hand with the fruit flavors in a perfect blending. I detect mostly strawberry, not tart but not candy sweet.
The biscuit flavor keeps it feeling like a decadent grown-up tea and not a candy tea for a children’s tea time. The base has nice heft. I steeped it just below boiling and at about three minutes. (I have found that I prefer those parameters for almost all black French teas.) I definitely made nommy noises. We all cried, “Encore!” when the pot was finished.
The good news is that the second steep was just as good as the first. Bravo, Dammann.
Want to Know More About This Tea?
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Damann Freres
Description
A blend of black teas with the delicious scents of red fruits, combining the aromas of cherry, strawberry, raspberry and red currant for an irresistibly fruity tea.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Cerise Noire from Dammann Freres. . . .
I love black cherry. It is one of those flavors that just gets me. I blame my mom. When I was a little girl she used to go to an ice cream sale and pick up pints of ice cream to keep on hand. Among the haul was always Black Cherry Ice Cream and me and my mom would always sneak down in the middle of the night (aka 10 pm) and just eat it right out of the container. I got older and the fondness stuck so to this day I can’t resist black cherry or in the case of this tea, “Cerise Noire”.
French teas, such as this one, are best suited to a low and slow steeping so I brewed this for 4 minutes in 190F. The end result is surprisingly thick. Since its scented, the black tea comes through first, mild and smooth. Then comes the cherry flavoring which is subtle. French teas have a typical red fruits flavor and this tea has that, though it does lean more to cherry than anything else.
Since I had enough leaf, I decided to also brew this up as a chocolate milk latte. Chocolate and cherries are quite the pair so I figured how could this be bad. Unfortunately it isn’t great. The chocolate milk combined with with the black tea just makes for a dark flavor that is not really chocolate nor cherry nor tea. The combination is almost a bit bitter and quite heavy. I had high hopes but chocolate milk latte is not the way to go with this one.
As far as black cherry goes, there could be more. At least for my tastes. Though it does have the typical french tea flavor profile so if that is what your looking for and you’re a black cherry fan, this could be a tea for you.
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Dammann Freres
Description
A blend of black teas perfumed with the delicious flavour of black cherry.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
