Much of the money that I don't spend on perfume goes to other household staples, like tea and chocolate. I have "collections" of both that rival my perfume collection in terms of profligacy, but I don't feel guilty because I do manage to use them all up before they go bad. I wish I could say the same of the perfume.
Today, reviews of two oolong1 teas from from indie natural perfume house Aftelier, and very brief descriptions of two floral chocolates from the British brand Rococo.
Aftelier Rose Ginger Oolong Tea
This is a lovely flavored Tie Quan Yin oolong. It's lightly oxidized but with a warm finish, accented with rose (quite noticeable, mostly in the aftertaste) and ginger (subtle but adds a nice kick). If you're not used to floral scented teas (or foods), it might, at first, seem like drinking perfume, but you'll get used to it quickly, and if you've ever had jasmine tea it will not seem so unusual.
Rose Ginger is reminiscent of one of my favorite Mariage Frères teas, Lune Rouge, but made with a much higher quality tea, and it quickly became one of my favorite scented oolongs of all time.2 It smells fabulous, with just the slightest hint of smoke. Oolong teas seem expensive (this one is $25 for a 30 g tin or $4 for a 3 g sample) but since they hold up well to multiple infusions (actually, many oolongs improve on subsequent infusions), the cost per cup is far less than what you'd pay for, say, a latte from Starbucks — depending on how strong you like your tea, you'll probably use anywhere from 2 to 5 g per cup; if you make make 4 infusions each time, absolute worst case scenario is that you'll pay about $1 per cup. I use just about 2 1/2 g per cup, so my cost comes to about 50¢ a cup. Not so bad, right?
Anyway, this is a perfect afternoon tea, and you can save the 3rd and 4th infusions for later at night, when presumably much (but probably not all) of the caffeine content of the leaves has been removed by your earlier steepings.
Aftelier Frankincense Oolong Tea
Rose-scented tea was not new to me, but incense-scented tea was, and the first sip was a surprise — it isn't a weird flavor, exactly, but it might be more of an acquired taste. It definitely grew on me over time, though. It's a slightly darker and warmer tea than the Rose Ginger, and the incense is bright and slightly citrusy. If I had to compare it to a fragrance, I'd pick one of the airy, not-so-churchy incense scents, like Comme des Garçons Ouarzazate or Tauer Perfumes Incense Extrême. I don't think I will ever want to drink it every day (although I do wonder if it would be more of an everyday tea in winter? There are a number of teas I almost never reach for in warm weather), but it makes for a nice change, and it is definitely worth a try.
The Frankincense tea is reportedly high in GABA (you can read more about GABA teas at Life in Teacup), if that matters to you. The price is the same as that for the Rose Ginger ($25 for 30 g).
Extra bonus: the Frankincense "layered" with the Rose Ginger (I tried a 50-50 mix) is excellent. The blend seems to accentuate the ginger — especially on later infusions — and comes across as richer and spicier than either tea alone.
Aftelier also makes a Linden Blossom Oolong and a Jasmine Mint Oolong, please do comment if you've tried either.
Rococo Floral Chocolates
Rococo is a British brand that makes any number of flavored chocolate bars & other goodies. Their floral collection includes Rose, Violet, Orange Geranium (I already reviewed that one) and Jasmine chocolates, available in dark chocolate, milk chocolate, dark chocolate wafers or fondant cream chocolates. I tried the Rose and Violet dark chocolate bars (somewhere in my house, a Jasmine bar is hiding out with all my missing perfume samples), and both are excellent: the chocolate (65%) is smooth and creamy and not too sweet; the floral flavors are not too strong, not too weak, although I found the rose considerably more intense than the violet. The packaging on these is adorable, and the one drawback is that they're not all that easy to find in the US.
If you've tried any wonderful teas or chocolates lately, do comment!
1. The Wikipedia entry on oolongs provides a reasonable introduction, and Oolong, The Tea Lover's Tea at the Washington Post is useful as well. There are many different ways to brew oolong. My method is easy but not traditional: I brew for 3 1/2 to 4 minutes using water at about 195°. I use a stainless steel basket that sits in an individual cup or mug, like so.
If you find the scented teas too "perfume-y", try shorter brewing times and perhaps lower the temperature of the water a bit. For a more traditional approach, try the Gong Fu method.
2. A quality high mountain oolong that has been only very lightly oxidized (sometimes called green oolongs) will often have a floral taste (usually described as orchid-like) even without being scented with flower petals, but I'll put in a quick word for one of my other favorites with added floral flavor: Ten Ren Osmanthus Supreme ($65 for 300 g). If you want to try an unflavored green oolong, Ten Ren's spring and winter limited editions are usually quite good. I also like Ito En's Dong Ding, and Upton Tea has a nice selection of oolong teas although my two favorites, Formosa Tung Ting Milky Oolong and Formosa Tung Ting Classic, are out of stock. At the moment they do carry an interesting oolong scented with magnolia (Magnolia Blossom Oolong) which I would rate as enjoyable if not quite excellent.
I adore the Magnolia Oolong from Upton, so if that’s only good I feel a little afraid to follow you down the road to excellent, R. Love milky oolong, too. Got my first batch from a San Francisco tea shop Vital Tea, but their website is a little wonky so I’m making do with a slightly inferior version until my next trip.
Where did you find you Rococco?
Don’t get me wrong, it is very good. And reasonably priced. Just did not think it was top notch. But I’m no connoisseur!
I got the Rococo at a chocolate store in Pittsburgh. The name is escaping me at the moment. They don’t sell online anyway 🙁
I’m envious. I wish there were such a thing as a “chocolate store” near me!
I wish there was one near me too! The best I can do usually is what I find at Whole Foods or Wegman’s.
At least you have a Wegman’s Robin – not too shabby! We finally have one on the way not TOO far from me. It won’t be ready for another year or so though.
The nearest Whole Foods is over 50 miles from my house. The best I can do is whatever is at Kroger or Target.
I have to drive 30 minutes to get to Wegman’s, alas. I only go on my way home from the mall, which is 40 minutes — so it isn’t a trip I make frequently. BUT, I’m getting a Whole Foods very soon — it will be a mere 15 minutes away. And the newer, larger Whole Foods stores seem to have way more chocolate than the older stores I’m used to. I can’t wait.
Oh, I adore Rococo chocolate. Have you tried the lavender? It’s incredibly delicate. I can’t indulge very often: it’s all so expensive and going up all the time (currently £4.25 for a 70g bar, ouch!).
I’m not keen on scented teas. I especially dislike Earl Grey. Fake. Blech. *runs away*
I have not tried the lavender! I will, if I can find it.
Whatever I paid is probably even sillier than what you paid, I’d guess.
Agree with you on Earl Grey.
I drink a lot of tea (especially green tea), but I guess I’m still a barbarian using tea bags, so I’m not sure I understand what you are saying about the infusions. Are you using 2 to 5 g in a tea ball strainer, and then saving those leaves to reuse up to 4 times? Does the flavor really hold up that well?
Yes. With a rolled oolong like this, the leaves are quite large, and don’t even entirely unfold on the first infusion. The 2nd & 3rd infusions are stronger, the 4th is sometimes a little weaker if you use my brewing method.
You don’t want to use a tea ball, there isn’t really room for the leaves to unfurl and steep nicely. But you can use the sort of strainer basket I linked to above.
In the traditional method, you use more leaves and a shorter steeping time, and often get (many) more than 4 infusions.
I was a barbarian using tea bags just a few short years ago! Try a few of these oolongs and you might never go back 🙂
I have also found tea balls to be too small to allow for proper expansion of the tea leaves. I don’t know if anyone else does it this way, but for loose tea, I have started using a French press. I use it only for tea, not for coffee, so there is no cross-contamination. I like it because the leaves are able to circulate freely in the water. I just make sure to use a cup or mug large enough to receive all of the brewed tea at once. Otherwise, any tea left in the press will continue to brew even after the plunger is pressed down, and will become bitter.
A French press setup works well. For tea leaves I’m going to reuse, I just find the stainless baskets very handy — I can just leave it out to dry (with the leaves in it) until I’m ready to make another cup.
Somebody gave me one of these French-press-like-thingies for tea:
http://www.adagio.com/teaware/ingenuiTEA_teapot.html?SID=2bb52b4ace863b200af530d6ca8a4399
…and it’s nice, but I don’t like that it’s plastic and I don’t find it all that easy to clean.
My French press is glass, with a stainless steel strainer and plunger.
Perfect!
Funnily enough, the last interesting chocolate I had was probably Rococo Jasmine bar. I quite liked it, it was more subtle than I expected with jasmine simply adding a little bit of interest rather than being the dominant flavour.
I’m more of a coffee drinker (use my espresso machine every day) so I don’t drink tea often enough to justify buying many different ones but I was given some Ladurée tea as a gift not so long ago. If I recall rightly it had things like orange blossom, rose, etc in it and it was lovely; very natural flavours, light, delicate and a perfect accompaniment for macaroons 😀 Of course, it might it be even trickier to find than Rococo.
I have looked for that darned bar EVERYWHERE, I’m quite pissed about it. Jasmine in chocolate is so good!
I will have to see if I can find some Laduree teas, but yeah, might be hard here!
Oh, I hope you find it eventually. I’ve mis-placed perfume samples before but never a chocolate bar so far!
I have this vague memory of taking it out of the chocolate drawer and putting it somewhere so I’d remember to eat it next. My office is a MESS, it is probably in here somewhere.
I love tea more than I love perfume ( I think). I drink quite a lot of green tea but also really like black ( esp. Yunnan and Assam) teas and the occasional white tea.
How good are the Mariage Frères teas?
I have looked at their site on many occasions and would love to order some but as shipping even to Holland is fairly pricey I am hesitant. I know Betjeman & Barton well.( Another French teahouse that happens to have a shop in Holland. )
Do you not make tea in a teapot at all? I never make tea in a cup but that thing you use looks really handy for making a single cup of tea.
I tend to make pots of tea and have several to suit the different kinds of tea. It’s such a shame to make a green tea or an oolong in a pot previously used for making Lapsang Souchong.
I do not order any of my fancy “plain” (unflavored) green / white / oolong teas from MF as I am very happy with what I get from Upton, Harneys, Ten Ren and Ito En in the US, so cannot speak to their quality. All I order from MF is scented/flavored greens & rooibos (the greens are made, I assume, with not-very-high-grade bancha or sencha), which I drink sometimes in the afternoons and use for iced tea. They make a zillion different flavors, some are nice, some are too sweet for me, but there are a few I really love and try to keep on hand (current favorites are Lune Rouge & Festin d’Or & Karikal).
I drink tea all day long and like to switch around, so I never use a pot! I have about 4-5 stainless baskets.
Adding: not sure I was clear, my answer is maybe that Mariage Freres, and Palais de Thes (both French) do more interesting *flavored* teas than the other companies I mentioned. There are companies here that do flavored greens & reds but I don’t think they’re as good at the flavoring part as MF or PdT.
But for a specific variety of *unflavored* tea, say, Lung Ching or Dong Ding or something, I don’t see why I’d pay to have it shipped from them when I can get a really top quality Lung Ching or Dong Ding here already.
Robin, thanks for such an extensive answer!
De nada! I was just checking out Betjeman & Barton, they look like a smaller version of Mariage Freres. I have never tried them. Another brand I am just starting to see here (but have not yet tried) is TWG Tea, which I think is out of Singapore and looks to have some interesting flavored teas. They’re at Dean & Deluca (a gourmet food store) here and I think at Harrods or someplace like in the UK.
Besides Aftelier, another perfume house with flavored tea is Miller Harris (UK), but have not tried those yet either. And on a smaller scale, the US indie natural house Ayala Moriel also does scented teas.
I suppose they do look like a little MF. The shop in Holland is very nice. The fact that they have a smaller selection makes it easier to choose your tea. Am currently enjoying their Thé le Tien, which is a black tea flavoured with spices and citrus.
I would really like to visit the MF shop in Paris. I love the fragrance of tea shops. I have to look up the Palais des Thés that you mentioned in one of your earlier tea-posts.
I love it how the more expensive teas have a much smoother feel to them than the cheap stuff you can buy in bags in supermarkets.
I am afraid that the only chocolate I like to eat is Nestlé’s cooking chocolate. It’s of course very dark although I don’t like the 80% black chocolate, I think my favourite is around 50% cacao.
I don’t know very much about tea – making an iced tea with green & white fusion tea with smashed ginger and lemongrass [strained out] is about as exotic as I get. That and hot Chai in cold weather. But when I read about the different, lovely sounding varieties out in the world, it makes me crave some! I almost, but not quite, develop a hankering similar to my perfume habit.
It is as easy to get hooked on tea as it is on perfume. As I said, less guilt-inducing, although I’d be terribly embarrassed to show anybody how much tea I have, it’s truly sort of crazy. But it will all get drunk, eventually!
Oh dear… everything mentioned here looks so amazing! I’m so very tempted to order the Jasmine Mint oolong right away. I just bought 5 new teas this past Wednesday though…..
I will buy that jasmine mint eventually!
Robin, my mother gave me a set of the three Rococo chocolates (she is the best gift-giver!), which I left in a bowl on the dining room table so that I could admire them for a while. I believe she bought them at Williams-Sonoma. Anyway. I walked by the table a day or two later, and the Jasmine bar was missing. My husband had innocently eaten it as a “snack”! just like that! without telling me! lol. I was quite agitated to make this discovery. But the Rose and Violet were delicious.
Ah, very good to know about W&S, thanks!
I accused my husband of eating my jasmine bar, and he pointed out quite correctly that he would never, ever purposely eat a bar with jasmine. I do still think he quite possibly ate it without noticing and doesn’t want to tell me!
That is one thing I don’t have to worry about. My husband hates chocolate (weird, I know), especially dark chocolate (which I love!), so any chocolate in our house stays put until I eat it.
My husband rarely wants the weird chocolates I like. So long as I don’t let him run out of his more basic bars (he likes the raisins & pecans, and the truffle bars, from Trader Joes) he mostly leaves mine alone. It is always nice to have foods nobody else in your house wants!
Mariage Freres, where are you? Perhaps I will find you in Toronto during my stopover…
In DC, you can find a limited selection at Balduccis and Dean & Deluca — guessing that means that similar gourmet stores in other places might have same.
Online in US: try http://www.porterouge.biz/
If they don’t have what you want, worth keeping an eye — their selection changes as they get new shipments in
I have ordered directly from France, had no problems but shipping is spendy!!
A, I WISH there was MF in Toronto, but no dice. I was informed that once upon a time they used to carry a limited selection in the food section of Holts, but no more. There’s a nice little tea store down by me in the West end, where I get my milk oolongs, but oddly not much selection in Yorkville, where all the other luxe stuff (like perfume) shows up.
Aussies are huge consumers of chocolate, I live close to numerous chocolate shops and 2 chocolate factorys (one is a large brand and the other a small niche) I just wish I didnt enjoy eating it as much as I do- so now I will be going to the Hobart chocolate shop that has imported chocolates and lollies to try and find Rococo! My only fragrant chocolate, at this stage, has been violet-very nice!
Wow, you have such good access — I’m jealous! Hope you can find the Rococo but sounds like maybe you don’t need it.
I have gobs of tea, too. I recently picked up a Lapsang that is so smoked I feel like I am drinking the ashes of a forest fire. In a good way.
I have tried Mandy’s Frankincense tea. It’s very weird, but I did enjoy it. I kind of balked at spending that kind of money for a tea, mostly because I was already giving my wallet apoplexy with her perfume.
I am kind of a caffeine wimp lately so have been having to limit my black, white and green teas. One of my favorite teas is a monkey-picked tea I got at the Bamboo House in Claremont, Ca, and also their Blue Willow black tea, which has some kind of blue flower petal in it. I also have their Flower Garden tea, which is a green tea with LOTS of flowers. Again, I do recommend Tea Fountain for some imaginative teas that you can get online.
My most interesting chocolate lately has not been a floral, it is Olive and Sinclair Southern Artisan Chocolate in Salt & Pepper. I already like salt in chocolate, and the pepper is a revelation.
Oh, I have tried that chocolate — very nice! Someone sent it to me though, & don’t know where I can find more near me. I really want to try the cinnamon one.
You know how to remove some of the caff from tea, right? Steep 60 seconds, pour out, add more water? But I’ve read wildly different things about how much caff that removes.
I’ll try it!
Just recently read about Aftelier Rose and Ginger tea on Ayala’s blog..I love the sound of it!
Also LOVE LOVE floral notes in chocolate. There is a Teucher chocolate shop near where I live and sometimes they carry jasmine truffles which are my favorite..Will look out for the Rococo chocolate. I especially want to try the rose one (which reminds me I have some rose petal jam in the fridge that needs to be eaten. It tastes amazing with a dollop of ghee/clarified butter)
that should have been teuscher
Ooooh, jasmine truffles! Want.
Ah, Robin, we are truly birds of a feather! I have no chocolate collection, but my tea cupboard runneth over. Most of my stash is from Upton and Harney, though I do have a tin of the scrumptious Mariage Freres Marco Polo.
After a morning medical appointment today, I took myself down to Harney’s Soho shop/tea lounge for a restorative pot of Panyang Congou and a plate of rice crackers topped with green-tea cream cheese and Lapsang gravlax. And of course I came home with a little bag of the Panyang Congou, as well as bags of Kenilworth Ceylon (since my current Upton bag of it is nearly empty) and Tower of London.
I just finished a small Chatsford pot of Upton’s Tie Guan Yin Second Grade about a half hour ago, but their oolong that you must try if you haven’t already is Spring Dragon. It is the very essence of lilacs!
I will get a sample of the Spring Dragon on next order, thanks!
Jealous that you can pop into Harneys. Do you ever go up to Ito En on Madison? Their selection of Japanese teas is impressive. I have never been to their restaurant on the next floor though.
No, I have not yet been to Ito En! Must add that to my to-visit list, along with Radiance Tea House on West 55th.
Harney is out of my general way but well worth a special trip. This was the first time I had sat down in the tea lounge and enjoyed a bite to eat and a pot of tea instead of just doing some tea shopping. So peaceful, and thankfully out of the way of the tourist crush on nearby Broadway.
Sounds so nice!
http://matchachocolat.com/
this company combines tea with chocolate! Yummy!
my fave is -among others- white chocolate with matcha green tea
Wow, those are some gorgeous looking chocolates! Thanks for the link.
Thank YOU! 🙂
As a fellow tea lover, I really appreciate your kind words about my teas.
When I perfume a tea, I think of the variety of oolong tea as the base note to the fragrance/taste I want to create. Some oolongs are greener, some more roasted, some with more floral notes, some more honeyed. I chose a medium roasted Tie Guan Yin oolong for the rose and ginger. The GABA oolong is the most full-bodied oolong with an almost black tea aroma which I think stands up nicely to the houjary frankincense.
Robin, I love your idea of layering them and had never thought of that. Will do that today! Thank you too to everyone who left a comment here baout my teas. I so appreciate the wonderful Now Smell This community.
Thank you, Mandy!
Thanks Mandy.
There’s a fairly new bar at Trader Joe’s that’s *amazing*. So amazing, I’m afraid, that they sold out in about three days here and won’t be in stock again for at least a few weeks. It’s called Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Bar – Caramel with Black Sea Salt, and I feel it’s up there with Chuao’s Panko bar in terms of how well the salt and sweet are balanced. The caramel is runny, and a little cleaner-tasting than I usually like my caramels (I personally prefer a bit more molasses or a brûlée edge), but the subtle, smoky qualities of the salt probably show better that way. If anyone comes across it, I highly recommend it!
Oh, dear, I’ll keep an eye out for that one!
Oh yay, because I bought one but haven’t eaten it yet. It looked like maybe it was done by Vosges, so I was already hopeful.
the violet chocolate sounds very tasty! I’m so craving dark chocolate right now.
I am nearly always craving dark chocolate 😉