Cio-Cio-San, “Madame Butterfly”, is the young geisha of Puccini’s opera, desperately in love with a foreign officer who abandons her with the empty promise to return in spring, “with the roses and the robins”. Mariage Frères has made it Madame Butterfly, a white tea, an image of the purity of feelings, scented with flowers and fruit.

The base is a sumptuous Pai Mu Tan, the “white peony” of Fujian, a white tea made from young leaves and buds that are simply withered and dried, to which the house adds rosebuds. The ingredients are tea, a flavouring and rose; the blend may contain traces of nuts. The house’s file classes it among its Jardins Premiers, and our page among teas with low caffeine content.

The clear cup opens into an intensely floral bouquet, dominated by Japanese cherry blossom, then turns towards sweet notes of exotic fruit, ripe persimmon at the fore. On the palate it is silky and expressive, like a tender, perfumed melody, the house says. The white tea underneath brings a velvety sweetness and a long finish, without astringency.

It is drunk in the afternoon, plain, in a glass teapot for the pleasure of the eyes, with light pastries, fruit, rose biscuits, or on its own. Iced, it keeps its flowers and its fruit. The leaves will take a second infusion.

Allow 2.5 g per 200 ml of water at 85 °C and seven minutes of infusion, the long time white teas require. Madame Butterfly is weighed and packed to order in our shops in Bordeaux and Nice, from 5 g samples to 1 kilo, in a pouch designed to preserve its fragrance.