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The resteep is rather weak-tasting with some faint vegetale notes and bit of a drying, astringent quality.

This is an oolong tea. Really. Honestly. Despite the dry leaves both looking and smelling like a fully-fermented Indian black tea like a Ceylon or an Assam. Now this is an oolong derived from an Indian tea bush, so I suppose it’s somewhat justified – it was just that I was hoping for more of a difference from a black tea.

The taste reminds me of nothing so much as a bakey Ceylon or maybe a lighter, malty Assam. Actually I think it tastes a fair bit like my Dejoo Assam from Specifically Tea. There is perhaps a briefest bit of floral at the beginning of the sip, but it quickly changes into something that tastes baked and faintly bitter, like you’d expect of a black tea. It leaves a malty, burnt-caramel aftertaste in the back of my mouth aswell.

I’m not sure how to rate this, really. It’s not a bad tasting tea, and if it were a black tea I think I’d quite like it. But as an oolong this wasn’t what I expected or was looking for.

I brewed up a big pot of iced tea which used up a good portion of the tea I had left in the canister.

When I brew iced tea I tend to add the usual amount of teaspoons per cups of tea and then brew it a little longer than I would with a hot tea, usually at a lower temperature too. Then, while it’s still hot, I usually mix in a bit of honey to sweeten it and then I leave it on the counter to cool to about room temperature and then I stick it in the fridge.

I added milk this time ’round and it make the tea taste sweeter, really bringing out the sweet fruit-floral flavour this tea has. Maybe a bit too much actually, as it was starting to taste quite artifical as I got closer to the bottom of the cup.

I really enjoy the citrusiness of this tea; I think I can pick up some orange and lemon flavours in addition to the usual bergamot. Yum.

Whoot! I just recently got the package Takgoti sent me and this was one of the teas she included. I’m really excited about trying the Samovar ones, but I’m almost scared that I’ll end up wrecking them!

I have to say that I’m a little disapointed at how small and broken up the leaves are – thought that could have happened easily enough in the mail, I suppose. The scent of the tea is a little ‘green’ but mostly it makes me think “Mmm, jasmine soap…wait-!” Sooooo maybe not the most auspicious beginning, but let’s move along.

I have to say that I think it’s too perfumed for my tastes. The taste-recognition part of my brain keeps sending me ‘jasmine soap’ which I like well enough – just not to drink. The green tea base strikes me as a tad bitter aswell, unfortunatly. I’ve got more leaf to experiment with so maybe I’ll reduce the length of the steep next time.

Second steeping and there’s a bit more flavour, but I really have to look for the white tea in the cup. It’s a light, faintly nutty flavour, but it’s oddly seperate from the flavour of the goji berries. They just don’t seem to mesh for whatever reason.

The pyramid sachets are filled with little rolled pearls of white tea that look quite similar to my Harney & Sons’ Dragon Pearl Jasmin. They lack the sweet, floral scent of the former however; instead they smell more or less like the dried goji berries that are mixed in with them. The tea brews up quite pale with a very faint, almost savoury odor.

The flavour is disapointingly dull and weak. Mostly it just tastes like goji berry-flavoured water. I’ll have another go at it with the second steep which’ll hopefully be better now the the pearls have had time to absorb water and unfurl.

It’s kinda sad that the people I traded this tea with got around to trying it before I did, lol.

The scent of the dry leaves reminds me a bit of an earl grey, but fruitier and sweeter. Wet they’re more like a not-so-pungent version of Adagio’s Grapefruit Oolong with the same wood/bark and citrus odor. However, as the tea steeped it actually took on a bit of a spicy quality near the end of the four minutes. Interesting.

When I sip the first thing I get is the bergamot, but it’s sort of a gentle, perfumed bergamot. Then it briefly takes on a rather tropical-fruity sort of flavour quickly followed by the wet cedar bark flavour of the oolong. Though again, the wet cedar bark thing isn’t as strong as it was in the Grapfruit Oolong. Finally, there’s also a bit of a spicy sort of aftertaste that lingers in the back of my throat after each sip.

Mmm chai… Go and read my previous tasting notes if you’re curious.