Golden Lily

I’m not normally a huge green oolong fan. Probably explains why I’ve taken so long to try this one.

And while the tropical notes described are faint and more prominent on the aftertaste, this IS a very creamy and drinkable oolong. My son keeps stealing away sips. I’m pleasantly surprised.

Not as flavorful as I expected, but perhaps I didn’t steep it long enough.

I have been holding off on reviewing this tea for some time now. I mainly did this because there were other teas I wanted to review first, but I also wanted to make sure my first impression of this tea was accurate. The first time I tried this, I was floored by how creamy it was. I loved it. I, however, did not want to post a review until the honeymoon period was over. Now that I have spent more time with this tea and tinkered with my brewing methods a bit, I can safely say that my first impression was more or less accurate.

I brewed this tea gongfu style. In order to keep my oolong brewing methods somewhat consistent across reviews, I opted to follow Verdant Tea’s guidelines for brewing oolongs since I have had great success with that method. The only thing I really changed was the water temperature. Following a quick rinse, I steeped approximately 6 grams of tea leaves in 190 F water for 10 seconds. I followed the first infusion with 11 additional infusions, increasing the steep time by two seconds per infusion (10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 30, and 32 seconds). At a later date, I did two shorter gongfu sessions with this tea. I raised the water temperature to 195 F for the first session and performed 5 total infusions of 10, 12, 14, 16, and 18 seconds. The other session was conducted using 190 F water and comprised eight total infusions of 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, and 24 seconds. Note that I will only be referring to the first session in this review.

Prior to infusion the wet leaves presented lovely aromas of cream, butter, custard, sticky rice, and coconut underscored by honey and floral scents. The early infusions emphasized savory, creamy, buttery aromas underscored by traces of honey, flowers, and sweetgrass. In the mouth, I detected robust notes of cream, custard, sticky rice, butter, coconut, and honey balanced by delicate floral notes resembling a blend of honeysuckle, osmanthus, gardenia, orchid, and chrysanthemum. I also detected very subtle vegetal notes. The middle infusions were more balanced with a blend of savory and floral aromas and flavors. In the mouth, the honey, floral, and vegetal notes became more pronounced and more refined. A hint of minerality also began to emerge. The later infusions emphasized a mix of cream, sweetgrass, and leaf lettuce on the nose. The mouth presented a mixture of delicate cream, butter, and faint floral notes underpinning leafy vegetal and fairly sweet grassy notes, as well as minerality.

I really like this oolong, but I simply could not move myself to assign it a numerical score higher than 90. I just cannot see myself reaching for this one all that often. Though the aromas and flavors are lovely, I found this to be something of a heavy tea. It was very filling for me and I’m not sure I really want that out of an oolong, especially a greener one such as this. Still, this is a very nice tea. I would not hesitate to recommend it to any curious drinker.

I tried cold brewing this, which was a mistake. I was like ‘what could go wrong?’ Most other green oolongs are great cold-brewed. Buttery and tannic and awful. At least there was some flavor versus the hot brew. Not good flavor, but flavor.
Ended up pouring it out.

This is a wonderful fruity and creamy oolong. I will concur with a previous reviewer here to be able to take a single tea unprocessed without adding anything to it and get a result such as this and the pleathera of other teas both black, oolong, etc is amazing. which is why tea for me blows coffee out of the water. It’s flowery, rich, fruity although i didn’t notice much coconut.

I’ve never tried Whispering Pines before, but I’ve heard lots of great things about their tea, so I was super excited to try the $5 sample pack deal. Today the box arrived :) First up, this lovely Jin Xuan. It’s not a really ‘buttery’ milk oolong, and I can’t detect the pineapple and coconut notes listed in the description, but it does seem slightly fruitier than the average milk oolong, and the flavor and mouthfeel overall is very smooth. Nicely done!

I brewed up about 5grams in a 100ml gaiwan at about 190f. I gave one rinse and actually tasted it and it was of course watery but left some fruitiness lingering. My first few steeps were a bit light for my taste so I ended up adding about another gram or so to the gaiwan. If you like tropical fruits and a creamy coconut taste then you will love this one. This was very lightly oxidized and tasted more like a green tea that an Oolong to me. The Oolong flavor itself was not my favorite as like I said it was more like a green but the crown jewel of this tea is its aftertaste. It is so sweet and tropical that I was wondering if it was a flavored tea. But the consensus is that it is not and that alone makes this one a tea to try. To be able to grow and process a tea without flavoring and get those kinds of notes is insane. Its a great tea and would be even better in the spring and summer as it is really refreshing. If you are a fan of green tea or lightly oxidized oolongs I would say give this one a go and you won’t be disappointed. I am not really a fan of green teas anymore as I have been tainted by the dark side (roasted Oolongs, blacks, and Pu’erh) but I did enjoy this tea. Quite creamy with a remarkable amount of tropical fruit flavor. Like a hot Pina Colada! Bear in mind these are notes that linger in the nose and mouth not actual sugary fruit flavors of a tea with chunks of fruit.

love it.

Ooh this is good. It is creamy and tropical with notes of pineapple and mango. The vegetal notes are a little more prominent than I was expecting, but that is ok. I find be that I got quite a bit of the plumeria notes as well, although I likely would not have picked out the particular flower, but it was provided in the description! I guess I cheated a bit. I resteeped per recommendations at 2,3,5 minutes. It holds up very well through the resteeps.

I didn’t try this for awhile because I dislike saying bad things abut small companies but I recently got some in a swap so I had to try it. You’re probably reading this questioning why I would say that about something I haven’t had before… good question: See, Capital Teas milk oolong is ridiculously good. Vibrant green and large.

However, this is great in another way. This is smooth without that odd flavoring. I really enjoyed drinking this down, enough so that it will be put up against BTT version to see who I buy some from.