Tea sample provided by Teavivre for review
This is from my newest batch of samples from Teavivire. I always love getting packages in the mail, except when it’s at 7am. ;) Anyway, I have a yixing pot for oolong, so that’s what I’ll use for this first tasting session.
The shrink wrapped foil package has a picture of a cute bird on a flower. It’s about 5g, so I can see this as being a nice gift by itself. When I cut open the pack, the aroma of flowers hit my nose right away. It wasn’t too much, just enough to captivate me.
Onto brewing and drinking the tea, the floral notes hit my tongue first, followed by notes of mint/menthol, fresh greens (like asparagus?), and pepper. After the last sip, I noticed how refreshing this tea was. Not heavy or too sweet at all.
The second to fourth steeps had the same flavour, with each steep becoming more intense but consistent.
Fifth through eighth steeps started to lose flavour, but retained enough of it to stay interesting.
Overall, an enjoyable oolong with good consistent flavour. I don’t have much experience with Tie Guan Yin to say if it is a very good one or not. On the package, it says to brew this at boiling which didn’t seem right, but the end result was delicious and not bitter at all. (However I used a yixing pot so that may have negated the bitterness). My husband only has access to boiling water at work, so he may like to buy this and brew it there. It has a very economical price, so we may use this as our “everyday” oolong that I can brew in the yixing and hubby can take to work.
Next time I’ll try this the western way in a teapot and steep it for much longer.
125ml yixing teapot, 1 tea pouch (5g? 2tsp?), 8 steeps (rinse, 30s, +15s resteeps)
