Mariage Frères

Day 25 of the Mariage Frères advent 2025.

Noel Imperial is an oolong tea flavoured with bergamot, vanilla, red fruits, and nuts. Very similar to yesterday’s Noel Majeste, but with the different base. The bergamot and vanilla are most prominent here, with a subtle twist of syrupy red fruit. The oolong base offers a pleasant mineral twist. I prefer the rooibos version overall, but this is nice too.

Day 24 of the Mariage Freres Advent 2025.

Noel Majeste is a rooibos blend flavoured with bergamot, vanilla, red fruit, and nuts. It’s pleasantly sweet and syrupy, with a generic red fruitiness that is similar to MF Marco Polo and yesterday’s Noel Princier. The bergamot floats delicately in the background, adding a hint of citrusy brightness, and the vanilla underpins it all with a delicious creaminess. I don’t really taste nuts at all, except perhaps the barest hint caught up with the woodiness of the rooibos. A pleasant Christmas Eve treat, regardless.

Day 23 of the Mariage Freres Advent 2025.

Noel Princier is a green tea flavoured with bergamot, vanilla, and red fruits. The bergamot is very prominent, and when combined with the red fruit flavouring almost strikes me as floral. It’s a similar syrupy “red fruit” to that found in MF Marco Polo, for reference. The vanilla helps to make everything smooth and creamy, and there’s also a touch of something like coconut? A bit of an oddity, but pleasant enough. Not one I’d choose to repurchase for myself though.

Day 22 of the Mariage Freres Advent 2025.

Noel in Love is an oolong with “notes of the 13 Christmas desserts of Provence”; among these flavours of hazelnut, citrus, candied fruits, and nougat. Considering what it promises, this one is a huge disappointment. Even after the recommended steeping time I’m getting only the faintest hints of nuts and nougat, although the oolong is deliciously smooth. Not quite the gourmand treat I was expecting.

Day 21 of the Mariage Freres Advent 2025.

Annee Du Cheval is a Darjeeling flavoured with goji berries and citrus. It’s a little smoky, with very prominent goji, and an almost dusty muscatel note. Certainly unlike anything else I’ve tried before. Still on the fence at the moment about whether I like it..,

Day 20 of the Mariage Freres Advent 2025.

Happy Ending is an infusion of 8 herbs, including lemon balm, mint, linden, hibiscus, ginger, lemon thyme, and rosemary. It tastes fresh, citrusy, and delicately herbaceous, with the mint, lemon balm, and rosemary taking centre stage. The ginger adds a pleasing warmth to the aftertaste, and contrasts beautifully with the more cooling notes of the mint. Definitely an intriguing one!

Day 19 of the Mariage Freres Advent 2025.

Paris in Love is an oolong flavoured with rose and red fruits. Got to say, it’s absolutely delicious! The red fruit flavours – strawberry & raspberry predominantly – are sweet and intensely jammy, with just a hint of rose in the initial sip. The oolong is mild and creamy, maybe just a touch mineral if I really sit and focus on it. A happy, uplifting cup for a Friday morning.

Day 18 of the Mariage Freres Advent 2025.

Happy Queen is a green tea with pomegranate flowers, orange peel, candied pineapple, and peony petals. Other than a mild citrus sweetness and a slight astringency, I didn’t find that it had much flavour to speak of.

Day 17 of the Mariage Freres Advent 2025.

Rose D’Himalaya is a Darjeeling scented with rose essential oil, although MF do say that the leaves have a natural rose aroma of their own also. In practice it’s definitely more of a scent than a flavour, with only the mildest hints of rose water translating into the taste. The Darjeeling itself is smooth, almost syrupy, and deliciously grapey. Altogether, a pretty beautiful blend!

Day 16 of the Mariage Freres Advent 2025.

Sencha Matcha Emeraude is a blend of matcha and Sencha leaves. I’m not the biggest fan of matcha in teabags generally, but I was careful with the temperature and brew time here and it’s actually okay; buttery and lightly vegetal with hints of sugar snap pea.

Day 15 of the Mariage Freres Advent 2025.

Marais Premier is an oolong with citrus and blue spruce. To begin with I taste mostly just a greenish, mineral oolong, but there is a subtle background of citrus and something a touch resinous. Successive sips bring about a flavour reminiscent of black liquorice – definitely an interesting one that grew on me more than I expected.

Day 14 of the Mariage Freres Advent 2025.

Sweet Dream is a herbal blend composed of green rooibos, chamomile, lemon verbena, lemon thyme, yuzu, and rosemary. It’s sweet with delicate hints of lemon and an underlying herbaceousness, presumably from the green rooibos/rosemary/thyme combo. Probably the most intriguing bedtime-style tea I’ve tried in a while.

Homemade Advent Calendar from AJRimmer – Day 13

I appreciate how many teas are in here from companies that are harder/more expensive to get in the US right now! I feel like I’m going on a little European tour in my mug.

This mostly tastes like almond and cloves to me, which seems like a weird combo? I had enough leaf for a second mug. I made that as an oat milk latte. The oat milk tamped down the clove flavor a bit, making the cup much more pleasant.

Day 13 of the Mariage Freres Advent 2025.

Lapsang Chinbara is a smoked black tea. The smoke is distinctive, but still subtle enough not to be overpowering; a nicely struck balance imo. The black tea base is surprisingly sweet and malty, which makes for a bit of an odd contrast – in my opinion at least. I’ve not tried too many lapsangs though, so may just be my lack of experience.

Day 12 of the Mariage Freres Advent 2025.

Paris-Provence is a white tea flavoured with lavender, rose, and spearmint. The lavender fortunately is not as prominent as I feared (I’m not a fan of lavender generally), instead appearing primarily as a scent, but also as a soft, sweet background note that I can actually get behind. This means that the creamy powderiness of the white tea base is able to shine, accented with a subtle burst of sweet, crisp spearmint and just a hint of rose. Delicate and beautiful!

Day 11 of the Mariage Freres Advent 2025.

American Breakfast is a black tea with flavours of caramel and chocolate. To be honest, when hot I get more of a syrup/pancake vibe from this one, although I can taste chocolate once it starts to properly cool. Either way, it’s delicious. There’s caramel too, but it’s much more of a background flavour than it is in Wedding Imperial, for example. I really enjoyed this one today; so cozy and sweet on a cold, dull morning.

Day 10 of the Mariage Freres Advent 2025.

Sweet Shanghai is a green tea with fruit notes. It brews up a pretty pale yellow-green, and tastes like tropical fruit juice. Totally unexpected from MF, whose flavours I usually find to be more subtle. This is delicious and I would 100% be happy to drink it again (I so rarely say this about bagged flavoured greens!)

Day 9 of the Mariage Freres Advent 2025.

Earl Grey Rhapsody is at first glance an intriguing one – an earl grey with a white tea base. It brews up a beautiful pink colour, although the ingredients list doesn’t give away why. Hibiscus or beetroot, perhaps, although I don’t taste either. Instead this is just pure bergamot from start to finish, which is fine as far as it goes but ultimately not as interesting as I’d hoped.

Day 8 of the Mariage Freres Advent 2025.

The de la Couronne (or “crown tea”) is a British-inspired black tea flavoured with fruits and spices. It’s deliciously sweet and malty, with a hint of juicy fruitiness – maybe blueberry, although it’s not a prominent enough flavour to say for certain. There’s also a subtle background of citrus which is reminiscent of earl grey. There is no “spice” to speak of at all as far as I can discern. The website indicates that this blend works best with milk, although my experience today is that it’s not really strong enough for that; even after the recommended 5 minutes, milk seems to wash out most of the flavour. Definitely glad I tried it black beforehand! On the whole I found this one pleasant enough but not particularly memorable.

Day 7 of the Mariage Freres Advent 2025.

French Afternoon Tea is a green tea flavoured with vanilla. The green tea base is smooth, delicate, and lightly vegetal, and the vanilla soft, sweet, and perfectly creamy. There’s just the barest crystalline hint of rose also. One of the nicest flavoured greens I’ve tried in a while.

Homemade Advent Calendar from AJRimmer – Day 7

I got distracted and ended up steeping this for 20 minutes, but it’s actually really good that way! The chestnut flavor is completely on point, with a subtle sweetness. The woodsiness of the rooibos works nicely with the chestnut. Part of me wants to try this out as a latte, part of me doesn’t want to mess with a blend that works beautifully on its own.

Day 7 of the Tea Thoughts advent is another pu’erh and I just… don’t really feel like going through the same “maybe this time will be different” → “nope this one just tastes like fish and wet dirt too” cycle of disappointment that I always seem to have with pu’erhs. I might just skip it and put it aside for rehoming.

Day 6 of the Mariage Freres Advent 2025.

Polo Club Blue Sublime is an oolong tea, not usually my favourite but this one is so juicy and fruity it’s impossible not to like. The delicate strawberry-rhubarb flavours intertwine beautifully with the lightly vegetal, floral, and mineral notes of the oolong, and the whole thing is deliciously smooth and silky. Definitely one I’d have overlooked had it not been in the calendar.

Day 5 of the Mariage Freres Advent 2025.

Rouge Metis is a rooibos blend flavoured with red and black fruits and florals. The rooibos is delicately woody but not dry, and there’s an underlying jamminess reminiscent of winter berries – blackberry particularly. There’s a hint of floral, but nothing significant. A deliciously warming morning cup, and great with milk.

Day 4 of the Mariage Freres Advent 2025.

The de L’Aube is a Korean green tea flavoured with yuzu. I’m pretty sure I’ve had a yuzu green from MF before (Yuzu Temple?) but many years ago. This one is pleasantly peppery with notes of smooth citrus, and just the tiniest hint of astringency from the green tea. There may even be a small amount of something like passionfruit contributing a degree of tropical sweetness, but that could just be my imagination. All in all, a pleasant flavoured green.